Israel's renewed military offensive in the Gaza Strip is "expanding to crush and clean the area" of militants and to seize "large areas that will be added to the security zones of the State of Israel," Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a written statement on Wednesday. The Israeli government has long maintained a buffer zone just inside Gaza along its security fence, which has greatly expanded since the war with Hamas was sparked by the groups Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack.

Israel says the buffer zone is needed for its security, but Palestinians view it as a land grab that further shrinks the narrow coastal territory, home to around 2 million people.

Katz didn't specify which areas of Gaza would be seized in the expanded operation, which he said includes the "extensive evacuation" of the population from fighting areas. His statement came after the Israeli military ordered all civilians to evacuate the southern city of Rafah and nearby areas — an order that came about two weeks after Israel abandoned a ceasefire that brokered by the U.S., Qatar and Egypt and resumed its bombardment of the Palestinian territory.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel aims to maintain an open-ended but unspecified security control of the Gaza Strip once it achieves its aim of crushing Hamas.

"The only way to end the war"?
Katz called on Gaza residents to "expel Hamas and return all hostages." Hamas, long a U.S.- and Israeli-designated terrorist organization, still holds 59 captives, of whom 24 are believed to still be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.

"This is the only way to end the war," Katz said.

The Hostage Families Forum, which represents most captives' families and has long pushed for an agreement to end the war and bring their loved ones home, disagreed with that assessment, however. The forum issued a statement saying the families were "horrified to wake up this morning to the Defense Minister's announcement about expanding military operations in Gaza."

The group said the Israeli government "has an obligation to free all 59 hostages from Hamas captivity — to pursue every possible channel to advance a deal for their release," and stressed that every passing day puts their loved ones' lives at greater risk.

"Their lives hang in the balance as more and more disturbing details continue to emerge about the horrific conditions they're being held in — chained, abused, and in desperate need of medical attention," said the forum, which called on the Trump administration and other mediators to continue pressuring Hamas to release the hostages.

"Our highest priority must be an immediate deal to bring ALL hostages back home — the living for rehabilitation and those killed for proper burial — and end this war," the group said.

Death and displacement in Gaza 16 days after Israel resumes war
Israel continued to target the Gaza Strip 16 days after abandoning the ceasefire, with airstrikes overnight killing 17 people in the southern city of Khan Younis, hospital officials said. Officials at the Nasser Hospital said the bodies of 12 people killed in an overnight airstrike that were brought to the hospital included five women, one of them pregnant, and two children. Officials at the Gaza European Hospital said they received five bodies of people killed in two separate airstrikes.

The war was sparked by the Hamas-led terrorist attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw 251 others taken as hostages back into Gaza.

Israel's retaliatory war in Gaza has killed more than 50,400 Palestinians, including at least 1,066 killed since the ceasefire fell apart on March 18, according to Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry, which doesn't differentiate between civilian and combatant casualties.

Israel claims to have killed around 20,000 militants in Gaza, but it has not provided evidence.

As of March 23, more than 140,000 people had been displaced again since the end of the ceasefire, according to the latest U.N. estimate — and tens of thousands more are estimated to have fled under evacuation orders over the past week. Every time families have moved during the war, they have had to leave behind belongings and start nearly from scratch, finding food, water and shelter. Now, with no fuel entering due to an Israeli blockade, transportation is even more difficult, so many are fleeing with almost nothing.

"With each displacement, we're tortured a thousand times," said former university professor Ihab Suliman, who spoke of having to flee eight times during the war with this family.

Fleeing from Rafah on Monday, Hanadi Dahoud said she was struggling to find essentials.

"Where do we go?" she said. "We just want to live. We are tired. There are long queues waiting for bread and charity kitchens."

United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Tuesday that the U.N.'s myriad humanitarian aid agencies were "at the tail end of our supplies," forcing the World Food Program to close all 25 of its bakeries in Gaza due to a lack of flour and cooking fuel.

"WFP doesn't close its bakeries for fun," Dujarric said, adding that the food situation remained "very critical" since Israel closed all crossings into Gaza a month ago, cutting off virtually all humanitarian deliveries into the enclave.

COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said Tuesday that nearly 450,000 tons of aid entered Gaza during the ceasefire. COGAT claimed at least some of the aid from the U.N. and its humanitarian partners was being diverted to Hamas.

Dujarric rejected that saying: "The U.N. has kept a chain of custody, and a very good chain of custody, on all the aid."

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