(TNND) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz say they are trying to close the vise on Hamas, expanding military operations in Gaza in hopes of driving the terrorist group to release more hostages.

But hostage families are worried the expanded military operations in Gaza will endanger the two dozen hostages believed to still be alive.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu said Israeli forces will establish a new security corridor, cutting across the Gaza Strip from east to west, from the Israeli border to the sea.

Netanyahu called it the Morag corridor – the name of an Israeli settlement that existed in Gaza from the 1960s until 2005.

He said it will be a second Philadelphi corridor, which runs along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.

“He said this will increase the pressure on Hamas,” described Ned Lazarus, a teaching associate professor of international affairs at George Washington University. “He said we're going to continually increase the pressure. We're going to hold territory, and we're going to divide the Gaza Strip. And this is going to increase the pressure on them until they release all the hostages.”

Lazarus said Netanyahu is also under a lot of political pressure as he makes decisions on the course of the war.

Israeli media reports that most people in the country want to end the war in a deal for all the remaining hostages. And 70% of Israelis don’t trust Netanyahu’s government, according to another poll.

Israeli forces have pushed into the southern city of Rafah, pushed forward on the ground between Rafah and the south-central Gaza city of Khan Younis, issued evacuation orders to civilians in Gaza, and continued air strikes and raids in the north of Gaza.

There have been several large-scale strikes that have killed dozens of people in Gaza in recent days, Lazarus noted.

“This is an expansion of the Israeli offensive that began after Israel announced that they were abrogating the ceasefire because Hamas was not releasing the hostages,” said Lazarus, who is also a teaching fellow at the nonprofit Israel Institute.

The future of Gaza is up in the air, with the initial phase of a ceasefire plan over and negotiations for a second phase proving fruitless.

The Associated Press reported that 33 hostages, including eight bodies, were released by Hamas in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in the first phase of the ceasefire.

There are believed to be 59 hostages, including 24 living, still in Gaza.

Hamas took around 250 hostages when it attacked Israel in October 2023, sparking the war that’s left Gaza devastated and tens of thousands of Palestinians in the territory dead.

Israel resumed attacks against Hamas last month as ceasefire negotiations stalled.

The Israeli defense minister said Wednesday that expanding military operations was the only way to end the war.

Raphael Cohen, an expert in foreign policy and the Middle East at RAND, said Israel has significantly degraded the military capabilities of Hamas. But it has not destroyed Hamas' grasp over the Gaza Strip.

“And what I think Israel is aiming for in this renewed offensive is to try to break some of both the remaining military capabilities but also the political hold of Hamas on the strip,” Cohen said.

Palestinian civilians in Gaza have protested Hamas rule in recent days, which Lazarus said is a rare and dangerous endeavor.

Cohen said those protests alone won’t break Hamas’ control over the territory, but the movement could spread and weaken the terrorist group.

“And more importantly, hopefully, pave the way for a better outcome where Gaza is controlled by something other than a terrorist organization,” Cohen said.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum rebuked Israel’s expanded military operations, saying in an open letter that the continued fighting risks hostage lives.

"Military pressure kills living hostages and makes it impossible to recover those who have perished," the group said in the letter. "This is not a slogan; it's a reality."

Both Lazarus and Cohen said it’s tough to say exactly how Israel can most effectively secure the release of the remaining hostages.

“We know from released hostages that when Israel upped the military campaign against Hamas after a failure of negotiations, their treatment deteriorated,” Cohen said. “And also, whenever you conduct military operations, there's always a chance you might kill a hostage accidentally. That said, it's not immediately clear what the alternative is, given that Hamas did not agree to a continuation of the ceasefire. Without a ceasefire in place, then it's not clear that there was another alternative to get the hostages out. So, it's certainly a higher risk option. But it's not clear immediately what the alternative is.”