Israel has no intention of ruling Gaza when the war is over, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as he pushed back at international concerns that Israel intended to reoccupy the coastal enclave.
“We don’t seek to conquer Gaza. We don’t seek to occupy Gaza and we don’t seek to govern Gaza,” Netanyahu stated during an interview with Fox News as he clarified that the IDF’s goal is to oust Hamas from Gaza.
“What I expect to see is a rebuilt Gaza for the Gazans,” Netanyahu clarified for Fox on Thursday.
Past comments that Netanyahu has made about the need for Israel to have an indefinite security responsibility for Gaza, has sparked Palestinian and international fears about Israel’s day after vision for the enclave of 2.7 million people.
The United States has acknowledged that the IDF might initially need to stay in Gaza for a brief interim period after the war. It has clarified that the enclave must be ruled by a Palestinian entity and remain part of a Palestinian state united with Palestinian territory in the West Bank.
The future of Gaza
Israel controlled the Gaza Strip from 1967-2005, when it destroyed 21 settlements there and withdrew its army, handing the area over to the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas ousted the PA’s Fatah party from Gaza in 2007 and has forcibly controlled the Strip since then.
There are those in the right-wing camp who have called for a return to Gaza since the Israeli withdrawal, with those voices growing stronger since the Hamas October 7 attack which sparked the war.
Netanyahu told Fox, “It’s clear what Gaza’s future has to look like. At the end of this battle we have to destroy Hamas.”
“What we have to see is Gaza demilitarized, de-radicalized and rebuilt.”
He added, "We will have to find a civilian government that will be there but in the foreseeable future we have to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”
US Special Envoy for Middle East Humanitarian Issues David Satterfield underscored for reporters on Thursday that “the future of Gazans is in Gaza and not any other place. We do not, as a matter of fundamental principle, support or wish to see displacement of Gaza’s population.”
He noted the existing displacement was temporary so that civilians could seek refuge from the fighting.
This included even within Gaza, he explained. “We do not see any enduring displacement, even within Gaza, from north to south.”
“We’ve said publicly two things must not happen at the end of all of this: an Israeli occupation, or Hamas remaining in power. Whether there is an international, regional transition that moves towards the Palestinian role in Gaza as well as West Bank that we believe is essential, that all will have to be worked out,” Satterfield stated.
The US sees “a future in Gaza which is determined by Palestinians. We see absolutely a need to have a common” Palestinian governance for the “West Bank and Gaza, no separation between the two.”
He underscored that “we believe that a two-state solution is the only ultimate guarantor of a peaceful future for Israel, as well as for the Palestinians.”
The Gaza war was sparked by the Hamas killing of over 1,400 people and the seizure of over 239 hostages when it infiltrated southern Israel on October 7.
Hamas has assured that close to 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in war related violence in the enclave as the IDF conducts its aerial and ground campaign.