Andreas Krieg, associate professor of security studies at King’s College London, has said Israel has used the two-month ceasefire to gather intelligence on the whereabouts of “Hamas cells” as well as potential locations of the captives.

“I think what they’re trying to do now is further degrade Hamas and potentially kill some of its leaders, which they’ve done over the past couple of days, and apart from that, seize more territory,” Krieg told Al Jazeera.

The plan is part of what the far-right Israeli government wants to achieve, including expelling all the Palestinians from Gaza as outlined by President Trump’s “bizarre vision of the Riviera of the Middle East”, he added.

“It wants to seize territory and potentially never return it. It wants to lock the people of Gaza up into smaller cells and then move in.”