Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told ABC News this weekend that he predicts the war in its current intensity will last at least another two months.

After that, Gallant thinks Israel will be fighting in Gaza for multiple months doing mop-up operations and "taking out pockets of terrorist resistance."

Gallant said the only way Israel would consider resuming any negotiation talks with Hamas is if "Hamas fulfills the original agreement and returns the 15 women and two children it is still holding" hostage, with no preconditions and nothing in return.

Gallant said he's committed to bringing home the rest of the more than 100 people who remain hostage in Gaza.

He added, "The only way with Hamas is to use force. Eventually they will give you something. … Hamas has two options: to die in the tunnels or on the surface, or surrender with no conditions.”

Gallant said Israel's goals for the war are to kill Hamas’ Gaza leader and Oct. 7 architect Yehye Sinwar, "break [Hamas'] chain of command" and ensure Hamas will “no longer function as a military organization that can launch organized attacks against Israel."

-ABC News' Matt Gutman

Six Palestinian mothers of premature babies evacuated from the Gaza Strip last month were due to leave the war-torn territory on Monday for Egypt, where their young children remain hospitalized, Palestinian authorities said.

The Palestinian border authority published a list of mothers approved to leave Gaza on Monday via the Egptian-controlled Rafah border crossing and asked them to head there.

Last month, 28 babies born prematurely in Gaza City's besieged Al-Shifa Hospital were transported to Egypt after their incubators shut down amid a collapse of medical services during Israel’s bombardment. Five of the mothers traveled with their children to Egypt, but Egyptian officials said at the time that the status and whereabouts of the other parents were not known.

-ABC News' Ayat Al-Tawy and Morgan Winsor

Journalists on the ground in southern Israel witnessed an incredibly heavy and constant barrage of artillery fire and airstrikes in the neighboring Gaza Strip on Monday afternoon.

From their position in the southwestern Israeli city of Sderot, which overlooks Gaza, the ABC News team could feel nearby residential buildings shake when the heaviest strikes occurred. Loud bangs were also heard overhead as a barrage of militant rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel and intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system.

Other journalists who have been living in Sderot since the war began almost two months ago told ABC News that the Israeli bombardment in Gaza on Monday was one of the heaviest they have heard or seen there thus far. Monday's strikes were far more intense than at the same time on Sunday and Saturday.

The heavy bombardment coincides with the Israeli military's announcement that its ground forces are now operating in all areas of Gaza and that it is "pursuing Hamas," the Palestinian militant group that rules the strip, in both the north and south.

-ABC News' Tom Soufi Burridge

The Israel Defense Forces said Monday that it is expanding its ground offensive to the entire Gaza Strip amid its ongoing war against Hamas.

"We have entered a new phase in our war against Hamas," IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a video statement. "We pursued them in northern Gaza. We're now pursuing Hamas in southern Gaza, too."

"As we expand our operation in Gaza, we remain committed to our goals: secure the release of our hostages and dismantle Hamas," he continued. "We will operate in maximum force against Hamas terrorists and infrastructures while minimizing harm to the civilians that Hamas places around them as shields."

Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that governs Gaza, which is home to 2.3 million people, has denied Israel's claims that it deliberately shelters behind civilians by hiding its fighters, infrastructure and weapons in hospitals, schools and other areas populated by civilians.

Hagari said the IDF used the seven-day pause in hostilities with Hamas last week "to increase readiness, review intelligence and refine operational procedures."

"We are implementing lessons learned for the new phase of this war, improving the efficiency and precision of our operations on the ground," he added. "We are pursuing Hamas wherever Hamas is hiding, in the north and in the south. Every rocket launcher, weapons depot, command and control center, senior commander, underground infrastructure and any hideout where our hostages may be held."

Hagari maintained the Israel's "war is against Hamas, not against the people of Gaza" and that "every civilian death is a tragedy -- a tragedy that the IDF does not want and is taking extensive measures to avoid." More than 15,500 people have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to figures released by Gaza's Hamas-run Ministry of Health and the Hamas government media office.

The IDF is "dropping leaflets with QR codes that opens a map guiding Gazans to safer areas," according to Hagari. However, the Israeli bombardment has disrupted telecommunications in Gaza and a majority of the population does not have access to internet or phone service.

"The map is divided into neighborhood numbers indicating where civilians in a specific area should go to avoid being in the crossfire," he said. "We call on international organizations in Gaza to assist us with this effort. It can help save lives."

-ABC News' Morgan Winsor

Israeli authorities say they have collated "hundreds of testimonies of rape and sex crimes" they claim was committed by Hamas militants during the Oct. 7 terror attack.

A document from the Israel Defense Forces details allegations of sexual violence, with "almost all of the testimonies" coming from eyewitnesses and first responders who were present at the scene during or after atrocities, the document states. This is because "virtually all" of the victims of sexual violence were also murdered on Oct. 7, according to the document.

The IDF said the document offers "only a small part of an immense body of information of evidence of Hamas' sex crimes" and said the evidence "proves beyond all doubt that Hamas and other … terrorists used rape and sexual violence systemically against Israeli women and children," according to the IDF.

One IDF volunteer quoted in the document described seeing many young women "in bloody, shredded rags, or just in underwear."

"Our team commander saw several (female) soldiers who were shot in the crotch and intimate areas," the IDF volunteer said, according to the document.

The IDF alleges that some members of Hamas who were captured and then interrogated also gave testimony that women were sexually abused on Oct. 7.

An Israeli paramedic quoted in the document said they inspected the bodies of two teenage girls who had been murdered. One of the girls "had her pants pulled down towards her knees ... and there's the remains of semen on the lower part of her back," the document states.

A survivor of the Oct. 7 attack, Gad Liebersohn, quoted in the document said that "for two hours I'm hiding and hearing people getting kidnapped and women getting raped ... begging for their lives."

Hamas, the militant group that governs the Gaza Strip, has denied the allegations that its fighters committed sexual violence during the Oct. 7 attack on neighboring southern Israel.

Cochav Elkayam-Levy, the head of Israel's Civil Commission on Oct. 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children, has described what she called "widespread rape evidence."

-ABC News' Tom Soufi Burridge