Israel Plans To Control 100% Of Gaza, Squeezing Hamas, Netanyahu Says

The Israeli prime minister said at a conference in an occupied West Bank settlement on May 28 that his strategy is to move from controlling 60% of the territory of the strip toward “100,” describing it as squeezing Hamas and “Let’s go step by step.”

The same source says the United States designated Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov as the executive director of the Trump administration’s newly established “Board of Peace,” an international council meant to oversee implementation of Washington’s 20-point Gaza road map.

Al-Jazeera Net

Common Dreams and Consortium News both frame the dispute over the roadmap around Mladenov’s role, with Common Dreams saying he has no real cards and is “merely a cog in a larger machinery controlled by Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Consortium News adds that Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said Mladenov’s U.N. Security Council briefings “contradict reality,” and it quotes Qassem saying “The genocide in Gaza is escalating, and children and women are being burned alive before the eyes of the world.”

Asharq Al-Awsat says Israeli forces resumed attacks in the Gaza Strip after a two-day pause requested by mediators and the United States to allow progress in ceasefire talks hosted by Cairo, where the parties agreed on wording related to the issue of weapons.

The outlet reports that the airstrikes stopped from dawn Tuesday until Thursday afternoon, then resumed with attacks targeting operatives from Palestinian factions and fresh strikes on residential blocks, including a Thursday strike that killed a member of the Qassam Brigades in the Sabra neighborhood south of Gaza City.

Asharq Al-Awsat English

Asharq Al-Awsat also quotes Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem saying that moving the yellow line, along with bombardment and displacement, was a “flagrant violation of the ceasefire agreement.”

In a separate account, جريدة القدس says that until Wednesday morning negotiations had an initial agreement on drafting a statement supported by the US, linking the calming of the Gaza Strip with a comprehensive solution leading to an independent state, and it describes Israel’s new conditions as demanding the complete transformation of resistance factions into political parties only.

جريدة القدس says that the aggressions since last October 10 have led to the martyrdom of more than 980 people and the injury of thousands, while also tightening the siege and preventing the entry of medical and food aid.

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Common Dreams

The same source says Palestinian factions demanded the immediate activation of the humanitarian protocol and the entry of sufficient quantities of relief for Gaza residents suffering “catastrophic conditions,” and it adds that they stressed the importance of strong international intervention to stop military attacks that threaten the complete collapse of the negotiation process.

Common Dreams describes the roadmap’s second phase as requiring sweeping, one-sided Palestinian concessions, most notably the total disarmament of armed factions, and it says Donald Trump and the Board of Peace declared the process began in January 2026.

Against that backdrop, lecourrier.vn says Hamas stressed strict adherence to roadmap provisions in Cairo last week, culminating in a unified position presented on Saturday, June 13, and it says the Hamas delegation and other factions would continue meetings in Cairo with mediators to advance implementation of any agreement reached.