Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would take control of “overall security” of Gaza after the war
Published November 7, 2023
The Israeli prime minister rejected calls for a cease-fire, but he said he would be open to short pauses in fighting. Meanwhile, the UAE announced it would open a field hospital in the Gaza Strip.
Israel is considering small pauses in the fight against Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday amid mounting international pressure to halt hostilities to let aid into the Gaza Strip.
“There’ll be no cease-fire, general cease-fire, in Gaza without the release of our hostages,” Netanyahu told American broadcaster ABC News.
“As far as tactical little pauses — an hour here, an hour there — we’ve had them before,” the prime minister added. “I suppose we’ll check the circumstances in order to enable goods, humanitarian goods to come in; or our hostages, individual hostages to leave.”
Israel has been under growing diplomatic pressure to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, where it has launched a major offensive against Hamas in retaliation for the Palestinian militant group’s violent attacks, which killed more than 1,400 people on Israeli soil on October 7.
During its surprise incursion, Hamas also took more than 200 hostages who are currently being held in the Gaza Strip.
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SOURCE: www.politico.eu
RELATED: Israel readies for Gaza City push as UN decries month of Middle East ‘carnage’
Published November 7, 2023
GAZA/JERUSALEM, Nov 7 (Reuters) – Israel gave civilians still trapped inside freshly encircled Gaza City a four hour window to leave on Tuesday, and residents escaping said they passed tanks in position to possibly begin storming it.
Israel says its forces have surrounded Gaza City, home to a third of the enclave’s 2.3 million people, and are poised to storm it soon in their campaign to annihilate the Hamas Islamists who attacked Israeli towns exactly a month ago.
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SOURCE: www.reuters.com
RELATED: Israel plans ‘indefinite’ controls over Gaza, says Benjamin Netanyahu
Move to retain ‘overall security responsibility’ aims to ensure Palestinian territory cannot be dominated by Hamas
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, centre, attends a security assessment meeting in Tel Aviv © Haim Zach/GPO/dpa
Published November 7, 2023
Israel will maintain an indefinite grip over Gaza to ensure its own security, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, in his first explicit comments on the country’s plans for the Palestinian enclave after its war with Hamas.
The Gaza Strip should be governed by “those who don’t want to continue the way of Hamas”, Netanyahu told ABC News on Monday, without clarifying whether he was referring to the Palestinian Authority, a rival to the militant group, or an international force.
“I think Israel, for an indefinite period, will have the overall security responsibility because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it,” he said.
Netanyahu’s comments are among the first on the role Israel intends to play in Gaza after a war he has warned could take months to defeat Hamas. They also reflect changing Israeli policy.
In October, defence minister Yoav Gallant said Israel would no longer have “responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip” once the war was over. He added that the conflict would create “a new security reality” for Israeli citizens.
On Tuesday Gallant told the Knesset foreign affairs and defence committee: “Israel will retain absolute freedom of action to act in every situation in which there is any sort of threat from the Gaza Strip.”
