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00:00We can now bring in our international affairs editor, Kethevan Gurdjistani.
00:04Kethevan, great to see you.
00:05What more do we know about this new offensive in Gaza?
00:08Well, the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, posted a video explaining a little bit what this plan is all about.
00:16And as you said, he talked about an intensive military operation.
00:21He said that Israeli troops would not be sort of going into Gaza with raids, as we've seen in the past, and then retreating.
00:28He said that the intention is exactly the opposite of that, without, however, saying how much territory would be actually seized.
00:38The idea for this plan is to basically capture most of the Gaza Strip, and according to officials, to remain there for an unspecified amount of time.
00:51So basically occupying the Gaza Strip for the foreseeable future.
00:57He also said, Benjamin Netanyahu, that the population would be moved to the south, adding that it was for their own protection.
01:06This is coming.
01:08So this is the military aspect of the plan.
01:11And there's also this idea of the humanitarian aspect of the plan, because Israel, since the end of the ceasefire about two months ago, has blocked basically all humanitarian aid from coming into the Gaza Strip.
01:26That means no food, no water, no fuel.
01:29And now it seems that Israel would want to take over or take charge in the distribution of that humanitarian aid.
01:39So Israel would oversee this and sort of downgrade it or pass on the logistics of it to private companies that would be operating from sort of logistic hubs in different areas.
01:53And civilians would have to go to these hubs to get that humanitarian aid.
01:59There's already reaction from aid groups and from the United Nations that see this as really going against humanitarian law and humanitarian practices.
02:09And the U.N. saying that this is really a way for Israel to use humanitarian aid as a pressure tactic, as part of a military strategy.
02:20And they said that they would want no part of that.
02:23They would not want to take part in that.
02:27And as you mentioned, there's also this question of calling up the reservists, because if you're planning on a huge intensive offensive, you need more troops.
02:37So there have been these tens of thousands of call ups.
02:40The question is how many of these reservists will actually agree to be called up?
02:45Because we've seen a movement in the past few weeks, past few months of reservists saying basically that they don't want to take part in these new military operations.
02:54So we'll see how many of them actually do follow through with that.
03:00It seems that the plan is to get these reservists that will be called up to go to other fronts, not to go to Gaza, to go to, for example, Lebanon, to go to the West Bank,
03:11in order to free up the standing army, for that standing army to go and operate in Gaza.
03:17So this is how the Israelis are planning to set up this offensive that could last for a long time.
03:26There are no real details as to how exactly they're going to operate.
03:30So what is the overall strategy, Katalan?
03:33Well, look, the official goal from Israeli officials is that this is about getting Israel to achieve its war aims.
03:43If you go back to the early days of this war, the main goals were one, destroying Hamas militarily and politically,
03:52sort of completely defeating Hamas, which has not been achieved yet because we see that, yes, Hamas has been weakened,
03:58but they are by no means completely defeated.
04:01And the second aspect, of course, is freeing the hostages that remain.
04:06There are about 60 of them that remain hostages.
04:11Half of those, or more than half, are believed to be dead.
04:14But there is the pressure from the Israeli population to really focus on those hostages.
04:20But also the goal is to put pressure on Hamas because there's achieving your war aims.
04:27But in the meantime, there's also this idea of putting more pressure on Hamas to maybe get Hamas to make concessions
04:33and to agree to some form of a ceasefire because of those negotiations.
04:40The problem there is that Israel says that it wants to end the war with, not to end the war without Hamas being dismantled.
04:48So that is the key before they end the war.
04:51Hamas, on the other hand, they want to ceasefire before they are forced to sort of disarm or operate in a different way.
04:59So it seems that those two ideas are completely contradictory.
05:04But the real sign that this is partly the goal, which is to try to maybe achieve a ceasefire,
05:12is that idea of a window of opportunity that this plan, this offensive, is not going to start right away.
05:19Remember that Donald Trump is going to be visiting the Middle East, including Israel, in the coming weeks.
05:25And so the Israelis want to give a sort of window of opportunity to maybe be able to force Hamas into striking a ceasefire deal
05:33before or during Donald Trump's visit.
05:37And only if that fails, then would they move on to the plan that has been presented.
05:43Ketevan, thank you very much for that.
05:45Ketevan.