Tel Aviv / PNN /

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the army’s Gaza war plan will be revised, amid mounting domestic pressure following the release of videos showing emaciated Israeli captives pleading for help and describing going days without food.

Speaking after a week of public outcry, Netanyahu claimed that new orders for the military are imminent.

On Monday, Netanyahu announced an expansion of the fighting in the Gaza Strip - despite opposition from the General Staff, fatigue among the fighting units and a lack of public legitimacy. 

He said that he would be updating the Gaza war plan, still aiming to achieve his three objectives: the destruction of Hamas, the return of Israeli captives, and ensuring that Gaza is no longer a threat to Tel Aviv.

On Monday, opposition leader Yair Lapid said: “The Israeli government no longer knows why soldiers continue to die in Gaza. Only the Netanyahu government refuses to discuss the question of how the war will end. It has not presented any plan, any political vision.”

Earlier in the day, 600 former Israeli security officials called on US President Donald Trump to "steer" Israel toward ending the war.

'Stop the war!'

Meanwhile, around 1,000 Israeli artists, writers, and cultural figures signed a petition on Sunday titled Stop the Horror in Gaza, demanding an immediate ceasefire.

The petition precedes a United Nations (UN) Security Council session scheduled for Monday to discuss the fate of Israeli detainees still held in Gaza.

The petition reads: “Against our values and will, we find ourselves complicit in the horrific actions carried out by our government in Gaza: the killing of children and civilians, policies of starvation, mass displacement, and the senseless destruction of entire cities.” It garnered 974 named signatories, including prominent cultural figures, and 62 anonymous supporters.

“Horror on a historic scale is taking place before our eyes,” the statement continues, speaking on starving Palestinians under the Israeli genocidal war and blockage of food and humanitarian aids. “We have the responsibility as humans and as Israelis facing horrors happening in our name against a population located a few kilometres from us, in an impossible reality and terrible suffering.”

It concludes: “Do not issue illegal orders and do not obey them! Do not commit war crimes! Do not abandon the principles of human morality and the values of Judaism! Stop the war.”

The petition is the latest in a growing wave of efforts urging Netanyahu’s government to reach a ceasefire and captive exchange deal as weekly demonstrations have continued in Tel Aviv and other cities.

The military wing of the Palestinian resistance movement, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said the captives were not being deliberately starved, but receive the same limited rations as the Palestinians under siege. “They won’t be offered special privileges while our people suffer starvation and siege,” the group said.

A humanitarian catastrophe

As pressure builds inside Israel, conditions in Gaza continue to deteriorate.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has warned that the Strip now faces the “worst-case scenario of famine.”

Earlier in the day, dozens of Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire while trying to access food. Another 16 were killed Sunday while waiting for aid.

The IPC warned: “People's access to food across Gaza is now alarmingly erratic and extremely perilous.”

The famine reflects the wider humanitarian collapse triggered by Israel’s 22-month genocidal war and systemic starvation policies, with the UN previously declaring Gaza “the hungriest place on Earth,” and 100 percent of the population at risk of famine as of May.

Since mid-May, the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has distributed limited flour rations to starving, aid-seeking Palestinians.

However, GHF aid distribution points have been condemned by tens of international aid agencies and humanitarian organizations as a "death trap", with Israeli soldiers killing over 1,400 aid-seeking Palestinians at their centres since its inception.