Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his security cabinet in Tel Aviv on Sunday evening, reportedly discussing the looming takeover of Gaza City and the option of extending Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank, but skipping entirely the issue of the ceasefire-hostage deal Hamas agreed to some two weeks ago.
While there were no immediate leaks of the meeting’s content Sunday night, multiple reports from before the meeting stressed that it was not going to touch on the truce deal, as Jerusalem chooses to eschew outlines that don’t guarantee the return of all the hostages and the disarmament of the Hamas terror group.
Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon, the IDF’s point man on hostage negotiations and head of the intelligence effort on captives and missing persons, was not invited to the security cabinet meeting, Hebrew media outlets reported.
The unusual decision not to include Alon was reportedly made in light of the cabinet’s choice not to discuss negotiations for a hostage deal, making his presence unnecessary.
Instead, the cabinet’s focus remained on expanding military operations in Gaza and pursuing only a comprehensive agreement that would both end the war on Israel’s terms and secure the release of all hostages.
Meanwhile, the Kan public broadcaster reported that, amid concerns for the hostages’ safety during the planned capture of Gaza City next month, teams from the Hostages and Missing Persons Directorate were to be included in the operation.
Before the security cabinet meeting, Channel 12 news cited unnamed sources as saying US President Donald Trump was increasing pressure on Netanyahu to move more rapidly toward defeating Hamas, after losing faith in the efficacy of ceasefire and hostage release talks.
Trump’s stance is reportedly a main reason that Netanyahu is pushing for either the full military conquest of Gaza or a comprehensive deal strictly on Israel’s terms, despite security officials speaking out against such plans and in favor of accepting the phased deal currently on the table.
Meanwhile Sunday, Hebrew media reports said Israel had begun removing protective concrete walls at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, in a sign that the threat from Gaza to Israeli border settlements has been drastically reduced.
The walls, erected after the May 2023 Operation Shield and Arrow against the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group, were meant to protect the kibbutz and motorists on the access road from mortar and anti-tank fire from the Gaza Strip.
In addition, the section of Route 25 that leads to the kibbutz, which has been closed for five years, was also set to reopen.
“The opening of Route 25 to Nahal Oz symbolizes not only renewed infrastructure but a return to life,” said MK Ze’ev Elkin, the Finance Ministry’s point man for rehabilitating the southern and northern border areas severely damaged by the current war.
“This is a move that restores residents’ confidence on their way home and their faith in the future here. The road has become a symbol of steadfastness and the ability to grow through difficulty. The first vehicles to pass through it will also open a path of hope,” he said.
One issue that was widely reported ahead of the security cabinet meeting to be on its agenda was the potential annexation of parts of the West Bank, with several far-right ministers pushing for such a step.
The question of whether this plan will materialize and to what extent is largely dependent on the position US President Donald Trump’s administration will adopt, the Axios news site reported Sunday.
“I don’t know how extensive [the planned annexation] is. I’m not sure there is common view inside the Israeli government about where would it be and how much,” US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told the outlet.
“What the Europeans are planning to do started causing more and more people in Israel to say that maybe they should start talking of annexation of parts of Judea and Samaria,” he added, using the biblical term for the West Bank.
According to an unnamed European official cited by Axios, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer has told French President Emmanuel Macron’s Middle East adviser, Anne-Claire Legendre, that the plan is to annex all of Area C — around 60 percent of the West Bank, in which Israel is in charge of both security and civilian affairs, and where all the settlements are located.
That is the maximalist option, a senior Israeli official told the outlet, with the others being extending sovereignty to the settlements and the Jordan Valley — around 30% of the West Bank — or just to the settlements and their access routes, around 10% of the territory.
Israel recently approved a settlement construction plan spearheaded by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, which will see some 3,400 housing units built in the West Bank’s contentious E1 area between Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, with the stated purpose of thwarting the potential future establishment of a Palestinian state.
International pressure had for years successfully dissuaded Israel from building in E1, with critics arguing such a plan would cut the West Bank in two, severing it from East Jerusalem and scuttling the prospect of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.