Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will have “overall security responsibility” for the Gaza Strip “for an indefinite period”.
Mr Netanyahu’s first comments on Israel’s plan for Gaza after the war came in an interview with the ABC News network in the US. However, he did not elaborate on the kind of security mechanism such a plan would involve. Israel says it aims to destroy Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007. Hundreds of Hamas gunmen burst through the border and attacked Israeli communities and a music festival on 7 October, killing more than 1,400 people, Israeli authorities say, in the bloodiest such event in Israel’s history. Hamas – proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel and many Western governments, including the UK – also took 242 people hostage, the Israeli military says. Israel declared war on Hamas the same day and has been attacking Gaza from land, sea and air since then. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more more than 10,000 people have been killed since Israel began its operation. When asked who should govern Gaza – home to 2.2 million Palestinians – after the war, Mr Netanyahu said only “those who don’t want to continue the way of Hamas”. But he also declared that Israel must have security control. “I think Israel will, for an indefinite period, have the overall security responsibility, because we have seen what happens when we don’t have it. “When we don’t have that security responsibility, we have the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine.”