Israeli public, military establishment oppose complete Gaza occupation
Dan Perry, a former reporter with The Associated Press, says it’s hard to know whether Netanyahu is truly planning to approve a full Israeli occupation of Gaza.
“It could be an effort to placate his far-right coalition partners while he buys time. It could be an effort to scare the international community into acting a little bit differently,” Perry told Al Jazeera from Tel Aviv about the motives behind the push.
Perry explained that the Israeli prime minister knows that the Israeli public and the military establishment are opposed to a complete military takeover of Gaza “in the sense of long-term or permanent occupation of and administration of 2 million people”.
“That promises to be a forever war, a massive insurgency, more loss of life on all sides, and also a likely sacrificing of the lives of the remaining hostages,” Perry said.
Under international law, the Gaza Strip is considered occupied by Israel, which maintains effective control over the territory.
Israeli opposition leader warns against taking over all of Gaza
After a security briefing with Netanyahu, Yair Lapid says he told Netanyahu that fully occupying Gaza would be a “very bad idea”.
“You don’t send the State of Israel to war unless the majority of the people are behind you, and the people of Israel are not interested in this war,” the Times of Israel quoted Lapid as saying.
Although Israel withdrew its military forces and settlers from Gaza in 2005, it retained control over the enclave’s airspace, territorial waters and ports of entry, so the territory remained legally occupied.
Israel’s Smotrich says funding ‘not for humanitarian aid’ but to ‘win the war’
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has released a video on social media addressing reports about the Israeli government’s plans to funnel money towards purported “humanitarian” operations in Gaza.
Stressing that Hamas must be strangled economically, Smotrich said he wants a dedicated budget in case Israel needs to “fund aid for the population instead of continuing to send trucks to Hamas”.
“Hamas can’t be defeated with tanks alone,” Smotrich said in the video, adding that he hopes a “clear decision will be made to conquer all of Gaza”.
In an interview with Israel’s Kan public broadcaster, Smotrich also said the funding is “not money for humanitarian aid; it’s money to win the war”, according to a Times of Israel report.
“Had we controlled the humanitarian aid to Gaza, we would have won the war a while ago,” he said.
UN officials and aid groups have repeatedly denied US and Israeli claims that Hamas steals the humanitarian assistance. Israel and the US have backed the contentious GHF group in Gaza as a way to bypass the United Nations in distributing humanitarian supplies to Palestinians under Israeli bombardment.
Since GHF began operating in Gaza in May, nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed while seeking desperately needed food at aid distribution sites operated by the group in the enclave.
