Netanyahu Says Israel Plans To Take Control Of Entire Gaza Strip
The prime minister and his far-right colleagues have faced intense backlash for such a plan, which would be a major escalation in the 22-month offensive.
Ahead of an Israeli Security Cabinet meeting to decide Gaza’s future, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that his military intends to take control of the entire besieged Palestinian territory.
In an interview with Fox News, the prime minister was asked whether Israel plans a complete takeover of Gaza, something that his Security Cabinet would need to approve before implementing.
“We intend to, in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza,” Netanyahu said. He added that Israel does not intend to permanently reoccupy the territory, but rather, eventually hand over control to an Arab state friendly to Israel.
Hamas said that Netanyahu’s remarks “represent a clear reversal of the course of [ceasefire] negotiations” in Gaza. Despite withdrawing from Gaza in 2005, Israel has continued to control the movement of people and goods, as well as the resulting taxes.
“We affirm that Gaza will remain defiant to the occupation and attempts to impose guardianship over it,” Hamas said. “Expanding the aggression against our Palestinian people will not be a walk in the park, and the price will be high and costly for the occupation and its Nazi army.”
The prime minister and his far-right coalition partners have faced intense backlash this week for pushing the plan to reoccupy all of Gaza, of which the Israeli military already controls about 75% after flattening the territory and forcibly displacing most of the population.
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the decision on whether to fully occupy the territory was “pretty much up to Israel.”
Such a plan, if approved by the Security Cabinet, would signify a major escalation in the 22-month offensive many in the international and human rights communities have since labeled a genocide. Israel is already finding itself increasingly isolated from the rest of the world due to its indiscriminate attacks, engineered famine and ongoing aid blockade that many of its Western allies have recently warned to stop.
Israel’s military leadership has voiced concern over reoccupying Gaza, including Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, who warned Netanyahu on Tuesday against making exhausted soldiers responsible for governing 2 million Palestinians.
The plan has also received pushback from families of the remaining hostages in Hamas’ captivity, who for months have accused Netanyahu of prioritizing his political career over bringing their loved ones home. Some families fear that attempts to reoccupy all of Gaza will put the surviving captives at even higher risk.
Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy said that Netanyahu’s claim that Israel wants another governing body to take over Gaza is “far-fetched,” according to Al Jazeera.
“Who is going to get into Gaza, who will be willing to do so, except for the Israeli military obviously?” Levy told the outlet. “That’s another way of covering up the real intention, and I’m afraid that the intention is quite transparent. There is a goal for this war … to push all of the people of Gaza to this ‘humanitarian’ concentration camp and then offer them to leave Gaza.
″[Israel is] preparing an ethnic cleansing,” he continued. “We have to face it.”
