Netanyahu's government divided over plans for military takeover of Gaza

Hamas has been decimated and most buildings destroyed. The Israeli military and hostage families fear another assault on the Palestinians will cause more civilian deaths and achieve nothing

- Isabel Coles & Ruth Michaelson

When Israel invaded Gaza nearly two years ago, it vowed to eliminate Hamas and save the hostages in a campaign it predicted would last several months.

After 22 months of fighting, those goals elude them still. Israel controls about 75% of the Gaza strip and has wiped out Hamas's leadership, but the group remains active and is holding around 50 hostages, though only around 20 are believed to be alive.

Faced with mounting opposition, the Israeli government is doubling down on a strategy that doesn't seem to be working. The prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed the military to prepare to take over Gaza city in a potential escalation of what is already the country's longest ever war. The fighting has devastated the enclave and killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, a third of them children.

"We have to ask what will change after almost two years of fighting [in which] Israel has deployed military power as never before," says Nimrod Sheffer, a former head of planning for the Israeli military who is now a member of the left-wing Democrats party.

Last week Netanyahu floated the idea of taking over the whole of Gaza, prompting criticism from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff Eyal Zamir, who said it would endanger the hostages and overstretch the military. After a 10-hour meeting that began on Thursday and lasted through the night, Israel's security cabinet approved a more limited plan to take over Gaza City. It has yet to be endorsed by the wider cabinet.

The aims of the plan, as outlined in a statement from the prime minister's office, include disarming Hamas, demilitarising Gaza and imposing Israeli security control, while granting power to a local authority run neither by Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority. Tens of thousands of Palestinians sheltering in the western portion of a shattered city would have until 7 October to move south.