Forced into tents on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea or huddling in the rubble, Palestinians have been running for their lives through 22 months of war. 

Dodging bullets and Israeli airstrikes while chasing scarce food, some two million people are squeezed into less than 100 square kilometers. And it seems they're about to be squeezed again. 

Najla Abu Jarad's family is squatting on the outskirts of Gaza City, Israel's next target. 

"They want to remove us, but to where?" asked the 60-year-old. "What's left in Gaza?"

According to the United Nations, 86 per cent of the territory is already within the Israeli-militarized zone or subject to evacuation orders.

There are many uncertainties around Israel's new plans to expand military occupation, even as its first step — taking control of Gaza City — was approved by government ministers and reluctant generals at a security cabinet meeting that lasted 10 hours and dragged into the early hours of Friday.

The stated aims are to disarm Hamas and free the 20 remaining Israeli hostages believed to be alive — goals that have eluded Israel despite its overwhelming military power. 

In order to achieve them now, Israel is edging toward a full Israeli occupation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is hinting at it.

When asked in a Fox News Channel interview on Thursday whether Israel will take control of Gaza, Netanyahu replied, "We intend to." 

"We don't want to keep it," he continued, "we don't want to govern it." 

WATCH | Netanyahu says Israel intends to take full control of Gaza: 

Israel intends to take full control of Gaza, Netanyahu says

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel intends to take full military control of Gaza and push a new offensive, despite mounting international criticism over the war’s human toll and growing hunger crisis.

Instead, he said Israel wants to replace Hamas, the militant group which has ruled Gaza since 2007, with "Arab forces that will govern it properly," without threatening Israel, he said.

No Arab country has publicly agreed to take on that role, and Israel has rejected handing control of Gaza to the Palestinian group that runs parts of the occupied West Bank, Hamas's political rival, the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority. Israel has also refused a proposal presented by Egypt in March to create a government made up of "independent Palestinian technocrats."

Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing almost 1,200 Israelis and taking some 250 people hostage. Since then, the resulting ground war and Israeli airstrikes have left more than 61,000 Palestinians dead, according to figures supplied by the Gaza Health Ministry. In both cases, the numbers include fighters and civilians.

Opposition at home and abroad

After nearly two years of war, Israel's military says it currently controls 75 per cent of Gaza, avoiding areas where it believes the 20 remaining living hostages are being held. The next step could be to take over all of the territory.

"We are setting up everything to go in," Israel's deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel told CBC News.

Haskel, who was born in Canada, said the process will mean up to two weeks of moving forces from Israel's north into Gaza, followed by a "four- to six-month military campaign" to bring hostages home and to disarm Hamas.

The plan has already run into stiff opposition, both abroad and in Israel.

Germany immediately halted arms exports "that could be used in the Gaza Strip until further notice." The European Union said Israel's plan to expand its military operation "must be reconsidered." Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, condemned the move.

Earlier this week, the UN warned of "catastrophic consequences" for Gazans and Israeli hostages.

And even as Israel's security cabinet met, protesters clashed with police in Tel Aviv and yelled outside Netanyahu's office in Jerusalem, demanding a negotiated deal which would end fighting and bring the hostages home. Recent public opinion polls suggest 74 per cent of Israelis share that view.

"To continue the war is a disaster for the Palestinians and for us the Israelis as well," said protester Naomi Granot.

Israel's military and security establishments also oppose the escalation of war.

Military chief of staff Eyal Zamir clashed with Netanyahu several times this week over the expanded mission for his force, reportedly in a tense three-hour meeting on Tuesday, and again last night. 

Zamir has warned the prime minister that taking the rest of Gaza could trap the military in the territory, from which it withdrew two decades ago. It could also risk harm to the hostages being held there, government sources told Reuters.

200,000 more soldiers

If the government does plan to go ahead with a full occupation, the next sign will be an order to call up more reserve soldiers, said Janice Stein, a specialist in the Middle East at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. 

According to the Israel Hayom daily newspaper, 200,000 reservists are required for the operation in Gaza City alone. 

"But when military leaders are saying there are no further military objectives to meet and further military action risks the needless deaths of reserve soldiers and the hostages, it is extremely difficult to call up reserve soldiers," Stein said.

On the other hand, there remains political pressure from far-right members of Netanyahu's coalition government to continue fighting until "total victory" is reached, as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir keeps reminding the prime minister. 

Netanyahu needs this support to stay in power.

Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have been labelled "extremist" for their ties to Israel's radical settler movement, and sanctioned by Canada, Britain and other countries as threats to "international peace and security" by promoting violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

They see Gaza as territory ripe for new settlements, and have pushed policies promoting "voluntary" migration of Palestinians out of the enclave.

"It's real," Smotrich told a conference last week marking the anniversary of Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza. "For 20 years, we called [the re-establishment of settlements in Gaza] wishful thinking. It seems to me it is now a real working plan."

Many Palestinians say that's what's behind Netanyahu's plans for the occupation.

"It's going to be accompanied by a push to get people out," said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian Canadian lawyer who used to advise the Palestine Liberation Organization and lives in Haifa.

"The idea of occupation is meant to be temporary, but in Israel's case, it's not. It becomes a permanent feature accompanied by the erasure of people in order to build Israeli-only settlements."

The Israeli government says this is not its policy in Gaza.

WATCH | Why aid distribution is failing in Gaza:

Gaza hunger crisis: Why aid distribution is failing

With a new warning that the ‘worst-case scenario’ of famine is now unfolding in Gaza, The National examines why the food distribution system is failing, and speaks to a Canadian aid group with workers on the ground about what it’s seeing and what it needs.

Meanwhile, aid groups are also sounding the alarm. 

A broader war in the enclave will make Gaza's humanitarian crisis even more dire, they say, and the delivery of food and medicine more restricted and dangerous. 

Already, the UN says almost 1,400 Palestinians have been shot dead by Israeli troops and private security contractors near aid distribution sites operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an alternate group supported by Israel and the United States. 

The GHF and Israel dispute the shootings and that their system is ineffective, saying tightly controlled aid delivery is needed so that Hamas does not hijack shipments. 

Netanyahu has even denied reports of famine in the enclave.

"There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza," he told a Christian conference in Jerusalem two weeks ago, triggering a heated phone call with Donald Trump, where the U.S. president challenged Netanayhu, NBC News reported. 

Israel's current aid system is one that Doctors Without Borders calls a "militarized food distribution scheme that is weaponizing starvation." 

Sana Bég, executive director of the group's Canadian operations, worries the failure to address the humanitarian crisis will be entrenched if the war spreads. 

"Are we at a tipping point today as a result of this? All points have been tipped," she said. "Are we at a make it or break it situation? We are already beyond breaking."