The ad-hoc group would create a plan allowing the controlled movement of Palestinians through Israel while providing them with security and escort services, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Friday announced plans to permanently annex parts of Gaza if Hamas continues to refuse to release 59 hostages still held in Gaza, NBC News reported.
"I have instructed the IDF to seize additional areas in Gaza while evacuating the population and to expand the security zones around Gaza for the protection of Israeli communities and IDF soldiers," Katz said Friday in a prepared statement.
"The more Hamas persists in its refusal to release the hostages, the more territory it will lose, which will be annexed to Israel," Katz said.
Israeli officials estimate only 24 are still alive among the 59 hostages and said the IDF will intensify its military actions that have killed nearly 600 in Gaza after Israel broke a two-month cease-fire on Tuesday.
A senior Hamas official on Friday said the designated foreign terrorist organization has demonstrated sufficient flexibility to resume cease-fire negotiations to end the war begun when Hamas attacked Israel and killed about 1,200 civilians and kidnapped about 250 while committing many atrocities on Oct. 7. 2023.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said any negotiations with Hamas only would take place while IDF forces continue military operations in Gaza.
Hamas officials Taher al-Nunu told Al-Jazeera indirect negotiations with Israel have continued despite Israel breaking the cease-fire agreement, but Israel has refused to negotiate, the Times of Israel reported.
Katz said Israel will use all available military and civilian assets to pressure Hamas to release the all remaining hostages,whether they are living or dead.
That pressure would include evacuating Gaza's population southward and implementing the proposed voluntary migration of Gaza residents to other nations.
Peace eventually will come through Israel's permanent control of Gaza, Katz said.
The proposed ad-hoc body for voluntary migration would determine a transportation route for Palestinians and create checkpoints at designated crossings out of Gaza.
Israel also would build infrastructure to enable the voluntary migration of Palestinians using land, sea and air transport to their respective countries of destination.
The body would be subject to international law and would include representatives from Israel's ministries of justice, foreign affairs, interior, finance, transportation and strategic affairs.
Others involved would include the IDF, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Shin Bet, the National Security Council and Israeli police.
The ad-hoc body would coordinate the voluntary migration activities with international organizations and others.
The IDF's current ground operation in Gaza partly is to prepare for the migration plan.
The Israeli government is expected to okay creation of the body to create and implement the voluntary migration plan, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Israel defence minister threatens to annex parts of Gaza
Jerusalem (AFP) Mar 22, 2025 - Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz threatened Friday to annex parts of the Gaza Strip unless Hamas militants release the remaining Israeli hostages held in the war-battered Palestinian territory.
The warning came as Israel pressed the renewed assault it launched on Tuesday, shattering the relative calm since a January 19 ceasefire.
A Palestinian source close to the ceasefire talks told AFP late Friday that Hamas had received a proposal from mediators Egypt and Qatar for re-establishing a truce and exchanging hostages for Palestinian prisoners "according to a timeline to be agreed upon".
The source said the proposal "includes the entry of humanitarian aid" into Gaza, which has been blocked by Israel since March 2.
Israel resumed intensive bombing of Gaza on Tuesday, citing deadlock in indirect negotiations on next steps in the truce after its first stage expired this month.
The territory's civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed 11 people on Friday -- three in pre-dawn strikes and eight more during the daytime.
On Thursday, it had reported a death toll of 504 since the bombardment resumed, one of the highest since the war began more than 17 months ago with Hamas's attack on Israel.
In a statement Friday, Katz said: "I ordered (the army) to seize more territory in Gaza... The more Hamas refuses to free the hostages, the more territory it will lose, which will be annexed by Israel".
Should Hamas not comply, Katz also threatened "to expand buffer zones around Gaza to protect Israeli civilian population areas and soldiers by implementing a permanent Israeli occupation of the area".
The military urged residents of the Al-Salatin, Al-Karama and Al-Awda areas of southern Gaza to evacuate their homes Friday ahead of a threatened strike.
AFP images from northern Gaza showed donkey carts piled high with belongings as residents fled their homes along rubble-strewn roads.
- 'Pressure points' -
Israeli forces said Friday that they had killed the head of Hamas's military intelligence in southern Gaza in a strike a day earlier, the latest official targeted in recent days.
Israel's resumption of large-scale military operations, coordinated with US President Donald Trump's administration, drew widespread condemnation.
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain called for an immediate return to a Gaza ceasefire in a joint statement late Friday, calling the new strikes "a dramatic step backward".
Turkey's foreign ministry condemned what it called a "deliberate" attack by Israel on a Turkish-built hospital in Gaza.
"The IDF (military) struck terrorists in a Hamas terrorist infrastructure site that previously had served as a hospital in the central Gaza Strip," a military spokesperson told AFP in response to a question about the Turkish accusations.
In a statement, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza condemned "the heinous crime committed by the occupation (Israel) in bombing the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital", calling it "the only hospital designated for the treatment of cancer patients in the Gaza Strip".
The ministry said Israeli forces had used the hospital as "a base for its forces throughout the period of its occupation of the so-called Netzarim axis".
Israeli President Isaac Herzog expressed worry about the government's actions in a video statement Thursday, saying it was "unthinkable to resume fighting while still pursuing the sacred mission of bringing our hostages home".
Thousands of protesters have rallied in Jerusalem in recent days, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of resuming military operations without regard for the safety of the hostages.
Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack, 58 are still held by Gaza militants, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
- Projectiles from Gaza, Yemen -
Israel's military said late Friday that it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen, after air raid sirens sounded in Jerusalem and parts of central Israel.
It is the fourth missile launched from Yemen towards Israel since Tuesday, after Huthi rebels threatened to escalate attacks in support of Palestinians following Israel's renewed attacks on Gaza.
In a statement early Saturday, the Iran-backed group said it had "targeted Ben Gurion airport" near Tel Aviv with a ballistic missile.
Israeli airspace would remain unsafe "until the aggression against Gaza stops", the group said in the statement.
Earlier on Friday, Israel's military said it intercepted two projectiles fired from northern Gaza, which Hamas's armed wing said was in response to "massacres against civilians".
Katz said Israel would "intensify the fight with aerial, naval and ground shelling as well as by expanding the ground operation until hostages are freed and Hamas is defeated, using all military and civilian pressure points".
He said these included implementing Trump's proposal for the United States to redevelop Gaza as a Mediterranean resort after the relocation of its Palestinian inhabitants to other Arab countries.
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