Palestinians watch because the Al-Ghafri tower collapses amid heavy smoke throughout an Israeli strike within the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, on Sept. 15, 2025.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Nearly two years into its retaliatory army offensive within the Gaza Strip, Israel mentioned it has launched a long-studied ground assault on Gaza City.
“IDF troops have begun expanding ground operations in Gaza City as part of Operation Gideon’s Chariots II,” the Israeli Defense Forces said Tuesday on social media.
“Gaza is burning,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had mentioned earlier within the day, in a separate Google-translated update. “We will not relent or turn back — until the mission is complete,” he added.
The ground invasion marks a deepening of Israel’s offensive within the Gaza Strip, which as soon as housed 2.2 million individuals and has devolved right into a starvation-stricken battlefield. Gaza City, beforehand the enclave’s most populous city settlement, remains to be dwelling to tons of of hundreds of displaced Palestinian individuals.
Israel insists its marketing campaign targets the demilitarization of Hamas and launch of hostages taken by the Palestinian militant group after its terror assaults in October 2023.
Speaking to reporters as he ready to go away Israel, visiting U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio signaled {that a} ground invasion of Gaza City was imminent.
“Well, as you saw, the Israelis have begun to take operations there. So we think we have a very short window of time in which a deal could happen. We don’t have months anymore,” he mentioned. “Our preference, our number one choice, is that this ends with a negotiated settlement with Hamas.”
CNBC has reached out to the IDF and Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs for remark.
International backlash
Israel’s army progress in Gaza has more and more remoted the Jewish state on the worldwide stage.
Several Western nations initially backed Israel’s proper to self-defense and to pursue Hamas militarily after the Palestinian militant group’s terror assaults, however have since famous the perceived disproportionality of the Jewish state’s Gaza marketing campaign and threat to civilians.
Nations together with Norway, Spain and Ireland acknowledged Palestinian statehood within the spring of 2024, with France, Canada and Australia later saying plans to take the identical step this month. In a blow to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration, a report by the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Tuesday concluded that Israel has committed genocide in opposition to Palestinian individuals within the Gaza enclave.
The U.N.-commissioned report doesn’t formally communicate for the U.N., which has not but used the time period “genocide.”
In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former protection minister and Hamas officers on costs of conflict crimes and crimes in opposition to humanity over the Gaza battle and October 2023 terror onslaught.
The U.N. fee’s Tuesday findings may deal an additional reputational blow to Israel, which has sought to retain working commerce ties with worldwide companions. In August, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, Norges Bank Investment Management, mentioned it had give up its investments in U.S. equipment producer Caterpillar and 5 Israeli banks following a evaluation of the businesses’ connection to the Gaza battle. Germany has in the meantime halted the export of weapons to Israel for within the Gaza Strip.
Broader market reactions have been muted, barring transient spikes in oil costs when Israel entered direct confrontations with Hamas’ crude-rich patron Iran and with different of Tehran’s proxies, equivalent to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis.
Yet Arab nations within the oil-bountiful Middle East — many of which entertain or are constructing strong relations with the U.S. — are unlikely to protest Israel’s present aggression in Gaza by way of an oil embargo, as they did in 1973, based on consultants.
“We would have to really see the big oil producers of the region — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, Iran — join and create an oil embargo,” Marko Papic, macro and geopolitical knowledgeable at BCA Research, informed CNBC’s Dan Murphy. “There is absolutely no talk of that, and therefore I believe this will continue to be completely and utterly market irrelevant for global investors.”
He additionally downplayed the chances of success of Israel’s newest Gaza offensive, which he certified as “yet another incursion that is unlikely to root out Hamas, and the reason for that is that Hamas is an ideology that will persist, either in its current form or in some future form.”
Arab ties
Despite this, Israel’s invasion threatens to rupture the Jewish state’s already shaky political relations with its Arab neighbors, many of which have traditionally supported the Palestinian trigger. The Gaza City invasion comes after Arab and Muslim leaders convened in Qatar and known as for a evaluation of ties with Israel following the nation’s strike on Doha final week.
Qatar’s emir urged leaders to take “concrete steps” in opposition to Israel in response to a missile strike on Doha which killed six individuals, together with a Qatari nationwide. Israel mentioned the strike was geared toward Hamas’ political management, who have been, on the time, discussing Washington’s newest ceasefire proposal. Doha has lengthy acted as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, internet hosting the political workplace of the group for a few years.
Views on Israel are divided amongst different Gulf nations. The UAE signed the Abraham Accords in 2020, recognizing Israel and establishing diplomatic normalization together with Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco after years of Arab isolation. The settlement now faces “the most difficult time since it was signed five years ago,” Emirati educational and political scientist Abdulkhaleq Abdulla informed CNBC.
U.S. President Donald Trump, in the meantime, has made it his mission to enhance ties between Israel and different Arab nations, cementing Washington’s affect within the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia is Trump’s subsequent huge hope for normalization of relations with Israel, however that would now be out of attain. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has signaled that this step would require a reputable and irreversible pathway to the institution of a Palestinian state.
For each the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the problems of ongoing deaths in Gaza and the potential Israeli annexation of the West Bank may imperil Trump’s ambitions to develop the Abraham Accords throughout his second time period.
“While relations can keep on being resilient, they are taking a different nature – limited in scope, mostly under-the-radar, focusing on security interests, and without a meaningful public dimension,” Nimrod Goren, president and founder of Mitvim, informed CNBC.
“Should the Israeli government decide to annex any part of Palestinian territories in the West Bank, following upcoming recognitions of a Palestinian state, then ties with Arab countries will suffer another blow and will further deteriorate. Israel should refrain from such a step, and the US should stop any such intentions,” he added.