Tel Aviv, March 3 (RHC)-- The Israeli cabinet has approved the extension of a special order that authorizes the regime’s military to recruit up to 400,000 soldiers for reserve duty by the end of May 2025.
The move came on Sunday after Israel prevented its ceasefire deal with the Hamas resistance group from going to the second phase, raising speculations about a resumption of the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip. A copy of the order said that 2025 would be considered a “year of war.”
Israel launched its brutal Gaza onslaught on October 7, 2023, after Hamas carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
The Tel Aviv regime failed to achieve its declared objectives of freeing captives and eliminating Hamas despite killing at least 48,388 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in Gaza.
Israel accepted Hamas’s longstanding negotiation terms under the three-phase Gaza truce, which began on January 19.
In phase one, which ended on Saturday, a total of 33 Israeli captives, including eight bodies, were released in exchange for 1,737 Palestinian abductees held in the regime’s jails.
Israel insisted on the extension of the initial phase. However, Hamas called for advancing to the second phase, which includes the release of all remaining living Israeli captives, a full withdrawal of the occupation troops from Gaza, and a permanent end to the war.
Hamas condemned Israel’s “ongoing manipulation” with its proposed extension of the initial phase of the ceasefire.
On Sunday, Israel blocked the entry of all humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi said in a statement that “the only path to regional stability and the return of the prisoners is the full implementation of the agreement, starting with the second phase.”
Hamas wants the second phase to include negotiations for a permanent ceasefire, a complete pullout of Israeli forces from Gaza, the territory’s reconstruction, “and then the release of prisoners as part of an agreed-upon deal,” he added. “This is what we insist on, and we will not back down from it,” he added.
