Israel said on Saturday it was expanding a new ground offensive in Gaza, with troops shutting down on the enclave after days of air strikes killed hundreds of Palestinians.
Defense Minister Katz said the new battle is forcing Hamas to soften its stance in talks in Qatar to ensure the release of hostages in captivity in Gaza, Gaza, as part of Israel's "negotiation in negotiations."
A Hamas official told Reuters that new talks were underway on Saturday.
Palestinians fear that the new offensive is a pioneer in the plan approved by the Israeli security cabinet on May 5, under which most of the surrounded enclaves will be occupied by the Israeli military, while 21,000 Palestinians will be forced into a small area by the border with Egypt.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said at the Arab League summit: "The Palestinian cause is driving one of its worst and most dangerous moments." He said Israel had a "deliberate effort to forcefully replace the residents of (Gaza) under the terror of unmoved war".
Egypt fears Palestinians enter its territory. NBC News reported that the United States is in talks with Libya to attract up to 1MN of Palestinian refugees.
Gaza health officials said at least 250 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds of injured in the past two days.
A UN team said earlier this week that Israel has blocked any food, medicine or fresh water entering Gaza in the past two and a half months, leaving thousands of Palestinians to starvation.
The full scope of the offense is not yet known Saturday. Residents reported machine gun fires in parts of Gaza and Israeli media said tanks were massed on the border. Israeli fighter jets threw flyers in certain parts of Gaza and mentioned biblical stories about Moses' separation of the sea.
The flyer, which is widely shared on social media, says: “The Israeli army is here.”
Israel intensified the air attack earlier this week when U.S. President Donald Trump ended his trip to the Gulf.
Israeli officials earlier called his trip a "window of opportunity" to swap Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies were acceptable.
In this case, Trump only negotiated the release of an Israeli soldier who was also a U.S. national.
An estimated 20 hostages and as many as 38 bodies remain in possession by Hamas, who refused to release them without a complete ceasefire and completely evacuate Israeli forces.
Katz said the number of negotiations in Hamas is evidence that neither the ceasefire nor the humanitarian aid to Gaza were successful negotiations.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that Israel's siege was "beyond description, beyond cruelty and beyond inhumanity".
"The policy of siege and hunger ridicules international law," he said on X.
His remarks come days after the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher warned Gaza about the looming "genocide" in which senior UN officials used the language publicly.
Israel rejects Fletcher's characteristics. It said it blocked the aid that prevented it from being stolen by Hamas.
According to local health officials, more than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, most of whom are women and children.
According to Israeli officials, at least 1,200 people were killed in Israel and 250 were taken hostage in the cross-border attack in Hamas on October 7, 2023.