Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har-Melech spoke at a conference Wednesday, calling for the future settlement of the entirety of the Gaza Strip at the end of the war.
At a conference of activists Wednesday in Ashdod under the name "Returning to the Gaza Strip," MK Son Har-Melech said that "there is no escape from returning and fully controlling the Gaza Strip, full control that will include extensive and flourishing settlement in the entire strip. Not like the Gush Katif settlements that were concentrated in a few isolated areas, but settlement for the entire length and width of the strip."
Likud MK Tally Gotliv was also present at the conference, and said that a "wall and a tower in the north of the Gaza Strip are needed immediately."
Gotliv later expressed doubts about the deal to release the hostages in Gaza. She said, "I've been on the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee since I entered the Knesset. I heard the Shin Bet and Mossad say that Hamas is deterred, 'It shouldn't be,' of course. Now I have to trust the security forces who tell me that a hostage deal should be made?"
Likud MK Ariel Kellner, head of the Samaria Council Yossi Dagan and Eliyahu Liebman, head of the Kiryat Arba Council whose son was kidnapped to Gaza, also participated in the conference.
The IDF remains ready at all costs
In the meantime, the IDF continues to promote operational readiness for an attack in the southern Gaza Strip on the basis of the intelligence flowing from the Shin Bet and the Southern Command in preparation for a large-scale ground maneuver.
Since the beginning of the war, the IDF has been content only with airstrikes and artillery fire against terrorist targets in the Khan Yunis area and Rafah, and avoided ground maneuvering in the area. At the beginning of the week, the IDF presented plans for the continuation of ground fighting in the Gaza Strip, and Defense Minister Galant emphasized the intention to continue the maneuver in the Gaza Strip.
According to the estimates of senior officials in the security system, senior Hamas officials Yahya Sinwar, Muhammad Daf and Marwan Issa are entrenched underground in Khan Yunis, and in order to reach them or to destroy them, they must be pushed deep into the Palestinian territory there. "They have used the last few years to build underground systems at a very high engineering level, under sensitive facilities, including around hospitals," said a senior security official, "only this time we are coming much more prepared , after the 'peeling' of the underground capabilities in Gaza, with an emphasis on Shifa."
Meanwhile, criticism is growing against the war cabinet and senior security officials, who did not approve of attacking parts of the Gaza Strip from the beginning of the war, even though they see it as Hamas' "oxygen pipe" to the Gaza Strip. According to sources in the security establishment, the IDF did not attack with bombs and missiles the axis, under which tunnels were dug that create a highway from the Palestinian side to the Egyptian side and vice versa.