I'm John Batscher speaking with my colleague David Diou, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy.

We go to Gaza where the news in these last hours, Israel issues evacuation order as it launches new offensive in southern Gaza.

You will recall that the Israeli military, third division, entered northern Gaza, Gaza City,

and Kahnunits in the center. Now southern Gaza. David, there is, at this point, no transparency

about these operations, but we can believe they're in pursuit of some aspect of Hamas,

either underground or fading in with the population.

Is there a sense of the mission here? Are they accomplishing the mission, having pushed major

combat units into Gaza again? Well, I think it depends on what the mission is. And there's, again, there's not so much transparency here on what the actual Israeli objective

is.

There's this talk of continuing the war until Hamas's total defeat, total victory.

What that means specifically has been kept to some degree vague or shifted over time.

So, you know, what we're seeing now is that is this Israel throwing, you know, all of the ceasefire to the wind and saying, we're done, we're going to pursue this goal of destroying Hamas however long

it takes and however much it takes? Or is it because of Hamas's intransigence during

ceasefire negotiations? And this is Israel trying to ramp up the pressure to make sure that Hamas becomes more malleable during ceasefire negotiations.

It's not clear, to be honest.

I think the interpretation could go either way, that this is Israel trying to ratchet up the pressure

to make the price for Hamas' intransigence much higher and make them more flexible in ceasefire negotiations to get, you know, I think they're demanding 11 living hostages and names of several

others. So I think this is probably an attempt by the Israelis to, you know, to push Hamas

into a corner and make them more medable to Israeli pressure and Israeli demands.

Has there been an update on the Gazans relocating for rebuilding or relocating permanently? Any change

in the weather on that one? I mean, Prime Minister Netanyahu says that's still on the table,

the voluntary relocation plan.

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