Netanyahu Says Israel Will Maintain Military Control Over Gaza - Israel News - Haaretz.com
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Sunday that Israel will maintain military control over the Gaza Strip and will not allow the Palestinian Authority to replace Hamas, and criticized the pushback from Biden's administration toward Israel's offensive in Gaza last year.
"We will not succumb to any pressure not to do that," Netanyahu said over Israel's plans for military rule in Gaza at a conference hosted by the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) in Jerusalem.
He added that the only reason Israel isn't destroying "remnants" of remaining Hamas battalions is because of the hostages.
Addressing the conference, Netanyahu said, "We have to finish the war in Gaza, get our hostages back and destroy Hamas." He also praised U.S. President Donald Trump's plan for what he described as the "voluntary relocation" of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip: "Believe me, many of them want to leave," Netanyahu said.
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"Hamas will not be there," he said regarding Gaza's future, adding that "we're not going to put the Palestinian Authority there. Why replace one regime that is sworn to our destruction with another regime that is sworn to our destruction? We won't do that."
During his speech at the conference, Netanyahu said that the October 7 attack was supposed to be coordinated with an assault from Lebanon as well, and that the goal was to "basically erase Israel."
Saying he appreciated the fact that President Biden came to Israel at the beginning of the war and gave support, Netanyahu said that the Biden administration urged him, "Don't go in. Don't do the ground invasion. Do it from the air."
Netanyahu added, "And I said, Joe, we tried that… I said, it's not going to work. We have to go in. So against their better advice, we went in, and then they said, well, very soon, the propaganda war began to work against us."
He also said, regarding Israel's offensive in Rafah last year, that "when we reached the outskirts of Rafah and there the Americans said, 'don't go in, and if you go in, we'll put an arms embargo on you.'"
"And I said to President Biden, 'Look, I respect you. You're the President of the United States. Please respect me,'" Netanyahu recalled.
He added that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken came in a few days later, saying, "The President is serious."
"I said, 'I know he's serious,'" Netanyahu continued. "And he said, 'So what do you say?' I said, 'Tony, we will fight with our fingernails if we have to.'"
Biden and Netanyahu embrace, in Israel, in October 2023.Credit: Evan Vucci / AP
"The assumptions that were broadcast around the world – untrue that we would create extraordinary civilian deaths, or that they had no place to go – they were proved to be wrong, and now we got the Philadelphi Corridor," Netanyahu added, citing that weapons are no longer being smuggled from Egypt to Gaza.
Regarding the notion of Palestinian statehood and peace, the prime minister said that "The Palestinians clung to the original opposition to Israel… that the Jewish State in any boundary, in any form, Israel has to be annihilated… that was and remains the principal obstacle to a Palestinian-Israeli peace, the persistent Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any form, in any boundary, that's the truth that somehow eludes fairly intelligent."
"So the idea that you'll create a Palestinian state and that will produce peace… the idea is folly, nothing more than folly. We just tried a Palestinian state in Gaza. You saw what that brought, right? So we are absolutely clear on that," he added.
Regarding the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks, Netanyahu said that "the real deal that works is a deal which removes Iran's capacity to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons," adding that "anything short of that, could bring you the opposite result," and that "the prevention of the development of ballistic missiles should be brought into the deal."
Later in his remarks, Netanyahu noted that Israel faces, alongside its current battles against its enemies, "another front," the "deep state." He told the conference participants that the American deep state is "very shallow" while Israel's is "ocean deep," saying it "threatens democracy."
"It abrogates the rights of citizens to choose that government that will make its own decisions, its own appointments. That has to be obviously resolved, but we have to understand that there is another threat on the horizon," he said.
Netanyahu alleged that campaigns against Israel abroad that are "funded, organized by governments, by NGOs, that are funded also by very wealthy individuals," and that some wealthy Americans "pay influencers to use the social media in a very systemic way to attack the supporters of Israel."
In December, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that after defeating Hamas, Israel would control the Gaza Strip in a manner similar to its control over the West Bank. In February of the previous year, Netanyahu presented his plan for the post-war period to the cabinet, which included Israel maintaining operational freedom in Gaza, establishing a security zone within the Strip, and combating smuggling along the border with Egypt.