Netanyahu directs Israeli forces to expand Gaza control to 70%

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday he had directed Israel’s military to take more of Gaza, initially by seizing 70 per cent of the Palestinian territory, where the population is already penned into a tiny strip of land along the coast. Israel effectively controls an estimated 64 per cent of the tiny coastal strip, bombarded to ruins by Israel’s two-year military assault that followed the 2023 Hamas ‌attack on southern Israel. Under an October US-brokered truce that has...