The Israeli prime minister does not want Israel to govern Gaza permanently, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) told JNS, amid reports that Benjamin Netanyahu is considering a wider military operation in the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave.
Gottheimer, who was part of a bipartisan congressional delegation to the Jewish state that met with Netanyahu on Wednesday, said that Israel is focused on defeating the terror group.
“We talked about it as the ultimate goal of ensuring that we crush Hamas, and we can’t have leadership and governance,” Gottheimer told JNS. “He was very clear to say that there was no interest in a long-term occupation and that you have to have some sort of multinational governance structure ultimately.”
Israeli media have reported that Netanyahu is considering ordering the Israel Defense Forces to occupy the entire Gaza territory, up from the roughly three-quarters it currently controls.
International aid organizations have accused the Jewish state of failing to deliver sufficient food and medical aid to the civilian population. Netanyahu has disputed those claims, saying that starvation “doesn’t exist” in Gaza and that media images of children, some known to have pre-existing muscular and developmental conditions, are Hamas propaganda.
Gottheimer, who visited the Kerem Shalom crossing point between Gaza and Israel and a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation coordination site, told JNS that he wanted to see how aid distribution was being carried out firsthand.
“I could see the aid moving in from Israel, massive amounts of aid moving from Israel,” the congressman said. “Watching that move quickly from the Israeli side to the Gazan side, and I saw massive amounts of trucks sitting on the Gazan side.”
Some 88% of U.N. trucks are being raided and looted by Hamas and others before reaching their destination.
“Those are U.N. numbers,” Gottheimer told JNS. “The GHF process that I saw was a much more orderly process in terms of getting food out for people and not having Hamas steal food.”
“Hamas makes a lot of money off of stealing humanitarian aid and selling it. They made $500 million last year off that,” he added. “They have a real incentive for GHF to fail and to inflate the situation, because they don’t want GHF to succeed. That cuts off Hamas’s funding.”
Gottheimer remains one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress at a time when many of his Democratic colleagues waver in their support for the war against Hamas.
About half of Senate Democrats voted against military sales to Israel in a pair of resolutions, which Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced on July 30.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote on Tuesday that she believes Israel is now committing “genocide” in Gaza.
“Recently, more and more prominent voices, including preeminent Israeli and Jewish American experts on the Holocaust and on genocide, have determined that what is happening is genocide,” she wrote. “I have been deeply influenced by the wisdom of these Jewish experts, who have named what is being done in Gaza as a ‘genocide.’”
Gottheimer told JNS that more of his fellow lawmakers should go to Israel and the Gaza crossing points to see how aid distribution is being carried out.
“Come to Israel and see the situation on the ground firsthand. Go to the Shalom crossing, like I did, and see aid distribution and not rely on Hamas for their information,” he said. “Israel is not winning the perception war, and the facts are not getting out.”
