World Africa Americas Asia Australia China Europe India Watch Listen Live TV Subscribe Sign in World Middle East Israel vows to escalate war with new plan to ‘conquer’ Gaza Oren Liebermann By Dana Karni, Lucas Lilieholm and Oren Liebermann, CNN 6 minute read Updated 9:25 PM EDT, Mon May 5, 2025 An Israeli army tank maneuvers in the Gaza Strip is seen from southern Israel on May 4. An Israeli army tank maneuvers in the Gaza Strip is seen from southern Israel on May 4. Ariel Schalit/AP Jerusalem CNN — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the population of Gaza will be displaced to the south after his security cabinet approved an expanded military operation in the enclave that a minister described as a plan to “conquer” the territory. The vote on Sunday came hours after the military said it would mobilize tens of thousands of reservists, strengthening its capacity to operate in the besieged Palestinian territory. “One thing will be clear: there will be no in-and-out,” Netanyahu said in a Monday video message posted on X. “We’ll call up reserves to come, hold territory — we’re not going to enter and then exit the area, only to carry out raids afterward. That’s not the plan. The intention is the opposite.” “There will be a movement of the population to protect them,” Netanyahu said of the “intensified operation.” A senior Israeli security official earlier said the operation in Gaza, called “Gideon’s Chariots,” was unanimously approved by the security cabinet with the aim of subduing Hamas and securing the release of all hostages. The plan would be implemented after US President Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East next week to “provide a window of opportunity” for a hostage deal, the official added. “If no hostage deal is reached, Operation Gideon’s Chariots will begin with full force and will not stop until all its objectives are achieved.” The plan then, is to displace Gaza’s entire population to the south of the enclave, following which the total the blockade of humanitarian aid may be lifted, the official said, adding that the military “will remain in every area it captures.” “In any temporary or permanent agreement, Israel will not evacuate the security buffer zone around Gaza, which is intended to protect Israeli communities and prevent arms smuggling to Hamas,” the official said. “We are on the eve of a major entry into Gaza based on the recommendation of the General Staff,” Netanyahu said in his video message, adding that military officials told him it was time to “start the final moves.” ‘Highest goal’ The “highest goal” of the expanding operation in Gaza, according to the military’s top spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin, is returning the hostages, not defeating Hamas. His comments come just a week after Netanyahu said the war’s “supreme goal” is the defeat of Israel’s enemies, not the return of hostages. “The top goal of the operation is the return of the hostages. After that — the collapse of Hamas rule, its defeat and subjugation — but first and foremost, the return of the hostages,” Defrin said responding to a question about his message to hostage families. The military spokesman faced swift condemnation from Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, who said Defrin was “confused into thinking that the army is above the political echelon.” Hostage families were quick to condemn the announcement of the expansion of the war, fearing that the Israeli government is prioritizing the defeat of Hamas over securing a deal to return Israeli hostages – and endangering them through the expanded military operations. Asked if the US approves of the new Israeli plan, National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes told CNN: “The President has made clear the consequences Hamas will face if it continues to hold hostages, including American Edan Alexander, and the bodies of four Americans. Hamas bears sole responsibility for this conflict, and for the resumption of hostilities.” Gaza annexation not ruled out Meanwhile, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Monday that “we are finally going to conquer the Gaza Strip.” Annexing Gaza is a possibility, and once the military expands its operations in the enclave, it will not pull back – even if Hamas agrees to a new hostage deal, he said at a conference in Jerusalem, referring to the security cabinet decision on Sunday. video thumbnail clarissa daniella settler movement video Related video ‘That sounds like ethnic cleansing’: CNN questions lead figure in Israel’s settler movement “Once we conquer and stay – we can talk about sovereignty (over Gaza). But I didn’t demand that it be included in the war’s objectives,” he added. “Once the maneuver begins – there will be no withdrawal from the territories we’ve captured, not even in exchange for hostages.” Smotrich primarily handles the country’s finances, but he sits on the security cabinet and holds significant sway over Netanyahu, who relies on his support to keep the government from collapsing. More than 2,400 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since mid-March when Israel launched a wave of deadly strikes, shattering a ceasefire, which had been in place for nearly two months. More than 52,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The expansion of the fighting will be gradual to give a chance for a renewed ceasefire and hostage release deal before US President Donald Trump’s visit to the region in mid-May, the officials said. Trump is scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar next week, but there is currently no stop planned in Israel. The UN raised concern with the latest expansion plan, saying it would lead to more civilians being killed. “I can tell you that the Secretary General is alarmed by these reports of Israeli plans to expand ground operations and prolong its military presence in Gaza,” Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General, Farhan Haq told reporters on Monday. New aid mechanism An Israeli blockade of all humanitarian aid into the strip is now in its ninth week. Israel says it cut off the entry of humanitarian aid to pressure Hamas to release hostages. But international organizations say its actions violate international law and risks creating a man-made famine, with some accusing Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war – a war crime. The cabinet also discussed allowing the resumption of aid deliveries into Gaza under a new framework which was approved, but has not yet been implemented, according to one of the sources. Israel’s public broadcaster, Kan 11, reported that a confrontation had broken out during Sunday’s meeting over the resumption of aid deliveries with two far-right members of the cabinet, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and settlements minister Orit Strook opposed to any resumption of aid and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir arguing Israel was obligated to facilitate them under international law. Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip on Monday. Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip on Monday. Abdel Kareem Hana/AP According to one of the source who spoke to CNN, the Israeli media reports about the arguments over the aid “are not wrong.” Palestinians clamber to receive donated food at a distribution center in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on April 7. Related article Israel, US in talks to resume aid deliveries to Gaza as famine looms, sources say, with announcement possible in coming days United States and Israeli officials are discussing a mechanism to deliver aid to Gaza that bypasses Hamas, an Israeli source familiar with the matter and a State Department official told CNN. The official said an announcement could be made “in the coming days.” The delivery mechanism in the works is intended to allow aid to reach the Palestinian population with safeguards to ensure it is not diverted by Hamas or Islamic Jihad, according to a State Department spokesperson. An unnamed private foundation would manage the aid mechanism and the delivery of the humanitarian supplies into Gaza, the spokesperson said. The US expects the United Nations and international aid organizations to work with the framework of the foundation’s mechanism to ensure that supplies do not reach Hamas, the spokesperson said. In a statement on Monday, Hamas criticized the new framework, saying: “We reject turning aid into a tool for political blackmail and support the international position that rejects any arrangements that do not respect humanitarian principles.” Aid agencies working in the occupied Palestinian territory also rejected the new framework on Sunday, saying the plan appeared “designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items” and would fail to ensure aid reached Gaza’s most vulnerable residents. “The UN Secretary-General and the Emergency Relief Coordinator have made clear that we will not participate in any scheme that does not adhere to the global humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality,” the groups said in a joint statement. Jennifer Hansler contributed to this report.

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Does gravity create reality? A shocking path to a theory of everything A rewrite of quantum mechanics that includes the force of gravity could finally achieve one of physicists’ biggest goals and reveal the ultimate fuzziness of time By Zack Savitsky 25 May 2026 ES Leer en Español New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine. Ryan Wills Sometimes, you work tirelessly on a problem, only to realise you have been going about it all backwards. Imagine trying to fit a massive antique piano through a tiny doorway. You have tried everything – rotating it, removing the legs, forceful shoving – but you just can’t get it to fit. Eventually, you realise it is easier to construct a room to house the piano where it already sits. Now, some physicists are grappling with a similar rethink. For decades, the accepted route to an ultimate theory of everything has involved taking our best theory of gravity and squeezing it into the frame of quantum mechanics. Given that quantum theory is wildly successful in describing the other three of the four fundamental forces of nature, it is an understandable approach. Yet, almost a century later, scientists still haven’t managed to make gravity fit. That’s why a few mavericks have championed an alternative strategy. They suggest that tweaking the equations of quantum mechanics – constructing a new room for gravity – helps explain how the strange world of particles gives rise to our everyday reality. Advertisement Various experimental avenues are opening up to probe this approach, involving everything from levitating diamonds and glowing metals to swinging pendulums and ticking clocks. The tests promise to shine a light on how the quantum world operates and guide the search for a more complete understanding of the universe. “This is like going into the open ocean: we have no clue where to go,” says Angelo Bassi, a physicist at the University of Trieste in Italy. “But maybe … by going in the wrong direction, we’ll discover the right thing.” Read more We've discovered a door to a hidden part of reality – what's inside? The world as we know it is definite. Your books rest solidly on their shelf, your clock ticks steadily forward and your cat is demonstrably alive. In the realm of atoms, however, nothing is certain. Quantum mechanics allows us to describe certain properties of particles, like their position, only in terms of likelihood. You can predict – with great success – the odds of finding a particle in one of many places, but where it will be observed in a given test is completely unknowable. Before that measurement happens, the object exists in a wave-like blur of all those possibilities at once, which we describe mathematically with something called a wave function. Subscriber-only newsletter Sign up to Lost in Space-Time Untangle mind-bending physics, maths and the weirdness of reality with our monthly, special-guest-written newsletter. Sign up to newsletter New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine. This leaves us with two big conundrums that lie at the heart of quantum theory. For one, it is unclear how and when the fuzzy quantum world gives rise to classical concreteness. The other problem is that this probabilistic description clashes with Albert Einstein’s classical understanding of gravity. Efforts to recast Einstein’s work on gravity into the language of forces and particles have resulted in constructions such as string theory that are cumbersome and practically untestable. A long-standing assumption has been that, deep down, everything is quantum. But a century after the inception of quantum mechanics, physicists are still struggling to make a cohesive story out of it. “There must be something else going on, and we have to understand what,” says Bassi. “The important step is to push quantum mechanics to its limits.” One route to finding these limits involves one of the many oddities of quantum mechanics: the principle of superposition. Scientists today routinely put a single particle into a mixed state of being in two distinct locations, a trick they can verify with interference patterns from those interacting possibilities. But once they measure where the particle is, it collapses into one definitive state: either left or right, say. There are many possible explanations of what happens when a measurement occurs – as evidenced by the variety of interpretations of quantum mechanics. The many-worlds interpretation says that each possible scenario plays out in a different branch of reality, while the Copenhagen interpretation says, essentially, to trust the maths. A skydiver, skydiving Some physicists want to adapt quantum mechanics to include the classical force of gravity Hans Berggren/Getty Images Another group of explanations searches for a physical solution. In the 1980s, physicists Giancarlo Ghirardi, Alberto Rimini and Tullio Weber proposed that some invisible process was tampering with quantum waves, causing them to suddenly collapse. In the following years, physicist Lajos Diósi at the Wigner Research Centre for Physics in Hungary and University of Oxford mathematician Roger Penrose proposed that gravity could be a culprit for this mysterious process. Essentially, the Diósi-Penrose model argues that, in the battle between quantum and gravity, quantum cracks first. The basic premise the pair set out was that putting a large mass into a superposition would force space-time to curve in two different ways – something it cannot permit. They proposed that the integrity of space-time prevails and causes the quantum waves to collapse. If this is the case, superpositions would have a lifetime that is inversely proportional to the square of their mass. Quantum objects could live in a superposition for very long periods of time, but the larger the object was, the faster it would collapse. This would explain why we never see larger objects in superposition – because their substantial gravitational tug would instantly force a collapse. It also tackles the thorny problem of measurement, because any device large enough to detect and relay information about a quantum system would become part of that system and disturb it gravitationally. This idea moved the discussion away from merely interpreting quantum theory and instead towards revising it.