Katz claims Hamas plotting to kidnap soldier; threatens to depopulate, raze Gaza City

Hamas is planning new kidnappings of Israelis, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday, citing “various intentions and intelligence,” and threatened to flatten Gaza City if the terror organization acts upon those plans.

Katz, speaking at an annual memorial ceremony for soldiers killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War at the Mount Herzl military cemetery, directed his warning to Hamas and two of its backers, Iran and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

His warning came amid continued conflict in the Strip between Hamas and the IDF, despite a nearly year-old ceasefire that saw the release of all of the terror group’s remaining hostages, living and dead. In its October 7, 2023, attack nearly three years ago, Hamas and other terrorists who invaded Israel took 251 people captive, a mix of soldiers and civilians including children and the elderly. The hostage-taking sparked a crisis that agonized Israel, prompted a global activist movement, and was at the center of the subsequent war.

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“I warn the terror organization and its supporters, from Iran to Erdogan: if even one Israeli soldier or civilian is kidnapped, the entire Gaza City’s… one million residents will be evacuated southward,” Katz said.

He also threatened to take out the city’s “homes and terror towers.”

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Gaza City is a major population center in the Strip, along with the al-Mawasi area to the south. Israel controls much of the enclave, but almost all of its population is in areas controlled by Hamas.

Katz’s threat to flatten the city is his latest bout of bellicose language in the lead-up to the October 27 election. He has also floated facilitating emigration from in Gaza and boasted of destroying villages in Lebanon.

“This is the language that the jihadist terror organizations in Gaza and Lebanon understand, and this is the language we speak: evacuating the population, destroying the infrastructure and taking the territory,” Katz said.

“It will be dealt with in the same way that Rafah and Beit Hanoun and 70 percent of the Gaza Strip were dealt with, until [any future captives] are returned,” he continued, referring to sections of the Strip that the IDF razed during the war against Hamas following the October 7 onslaught.

Referring to the line dividing Gaza between Israeli and Hamas control, Katz reiterated that the IDF “will not withdraw from the Yellow Line in Gaza to new lines of deployment inside Gaza as long as Hamas has not been eliminated and Gaza has not been disarmed of weapons and tunnels.”

IDF strikes Hamas sites after bomb hits engineering vehicle

On Monday evening, the IDF confirmed carrying out strikes against Hamas infrastructure sites in the Gaza Strip in response to a bomb that struck an engineering vehicle earlier in the day.

During routine operations on the Israeli side of the Yellow Line in northern Gaza, an unmanned engineering vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb, the army said.

No injuries were caused in the incident, which the IDF called a “blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement by the Hamas terror group.”

In response, several Hamas sites used by the terror group to advance attacks on troops and Israeli civilians were struck, the military said.

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