DEVELOPING STORYDEVELOPING STORY,
In an interview with Fox News, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel intends to take control of the entire Strip, but does not want to govern it.
His comments came on Thursday shortly before Israel’s cabinet meets to consider his proposal to take over the Strip.
“We intend to [take over] in order to ensure our security, remove Hamas [from] there, enable the population to be free of Gaza and to pass it to civilian governance that is not Hamas and not anyone advocating the destruction of Israel,” he said.
He said in the interview that Israel wants a security perimeter, and that they want to hand it over to Arab forces to govern Gaza.
“We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter. We don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body.”
The Israeli security cabinet meeting comes as international outrage over the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza has ratcheted up pressure on Israel, with UN agencies warning of famine in the devastated territory.
Gaza’s hospitals have recorded four new deaths “due to famine and malnutrition over the past 24 hours”, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry, raising the total number of hunger-related deaths to 197, including 96 children, since Israel’s war on Gaza after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel.
Israeli media say Netanyahu is set to seek approval to expand military operations, including in densely populated areas where captives are believed to be held.
This comes despite growing concern among Israelis about the fate of the remaining captives, some of whose families set sail from the port of Ashkelon on Thursday seeking to approach the Gaza Strip.
In the run-up to the meeting, rumours have been rife in the Israeli press about disagreements between the cabinet and Israel’s military chief, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, who is said to oppose plans to fully reoccupy Gaza.
On Wednesday, Defence Minister Israel Katz had weighed in on social media, saying that “it is the right and duty of the chief of staff to express his position”, but the military must ultimately respect any policies adopted by the government.
In a statement released by the military on Thursday, Zamir underscored his independence, promising to “continue to express our position without fear”.
“We are not dealing with theory — we are dealing with matters of life and death, with the defence of the state, and we do so while looking directly into the eyes of our soldiers and citizens,” Zamir said in the statement.
More to come.
