If Hamas does not accept a ceasefire and hostage-release deal by the end of next week, Israel will launch “Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” escalating the war in Gaza until Jerusalem attains its war aims, a senior Israeli defense source said on Monday. 

The Israeli security cabinet authorized the operation on Sunday “to act forcefully to defeat Hamas and force it to surrender, and destroy its military and governing capabilities while putting strong pressure to free all the hostages,” the source said.

To that end, the IDF began calling up tens of thousands of reservists over the weekend to increase the infantry in Gaza, backed up from the air and sea.

“A central component of the plan,” the source said, “is the broad evacuation of the entire Gazan population out of the warzones, including northern Gaza, to areas of southern Gaza, while creating a separation between them and Hamas terrorists, to give the IDF operational freedom of action.” 

In contrast with the first year of the war in Gaza, the defense source said, the IDF will remain in any territory it seizes during the war, to prevent terrorist cells from returning. Other areas will be treated like Rafah, “in which all of the threats were flattened and it turned into the security area,” meaning a buffer zone.

The current ban on humanitarian aid entering Gaza will continue until the population is evacuated to southern Gaza and until Israel launches a new mechanism for distributing aid intended to prevent Hamas from looting it. 

The mechanism involves the IDF inspecting all aid and securing a sterile zone near the Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza, where civilian security companies will distribute the aid, the source said. The aid will be given to representatives of individual families rather than distributed wholesale out of warehouses, according to The Times of Israel. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs rejected the plan. 

Israel is waiting until after President Donald Trump’s May 13-16 visit to the Middle East before launching “Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” in order to allow more time to negotiate a ceasefire and hostage release deal, the defense source said.

The source also said that allowing Palestinians to leave Gaza of their own volition, as Trump has suggested, will be one of the goals of the operation.

An agreement acceptable to Israel would have to follow the “Witkoff model,” the source said, referring to the most recent version of the deal proposed by Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. That proposal involved a six-week ceasefire and the release of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander as well as nine other living hostages, of which there are an estimated 21-24. Israel would release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange, including some who committed deadly attacks. 

Hamas has refused to accept a deal that does not include the end of the war. The terrorist group’s most recent counteroffer involved a five-year ceasefire but the group rejected disarmament — a red line for Israel.