Israel's Security Cabinet approves plan to take over Gaza City: AP

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office early Friday announced that the country's security cabinet approved a plan to take over Gaza City, marking another escalation in its war with Hamas, the Associated Press reported.

Netanyahu told reporters before the security council meeting, which began Thursday and stretched into Friday morning local time, that he planned to take over Gaza before turning it over to nearby allies who opposed Hamas.

"We don't want to be there as a governing body," he told Fox News. "We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us and giving Gazans a good life. That's not possible with Hamas."

The war in Gaza follows Hamas's terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas has been controlling the Gaza strip for nearly two decades.

A timeline for when the takeover would occur was not immediately clear, and it is not clear how many Palestinians still reside in Gaza City amid the war. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled the city when the war broke out.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.