TEL AVIV, December 20. /TASS/. Israel has established full control over the city of Jabalia in the Gaza Strip and is about to take over the city of Shujayya, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said.

"We have just completed the total conquest of Jabalia and are about to complete [the takeover of] Shujayya," he told the Washington-based Atlantic Council, designated as an undesirable organization in Russia by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office.

"We intend to take over the entire Gaza Strip," the president of the Jewish state continued, adding that only this can enable Israelis and Palestinians "live in peace in the future."

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion on Israeli territory, killing many Israeli kibbutz residents living near the Gaza border and abducting more than 200 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. Hamas described its attack as a response to Israeli authorities’ aggressive actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria, as well as a ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Clashes are also taking place in the West Bank.