Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Sunday that Israel does not seek to stay in Gaza, but to replace the Hamas regime in an expanded military operation, and insisted that was the best way to bring the war to a speedy conclusion.
“Our goal is not to occupy Gaza but to free Gaza,” Netanyahu said at a press conference for foreign media. “But no one is going to go in there unless we finish the job and finish Hamas.”
He noted that Hamas still has thousands of armed terrorists remaining in about a quarter of the coastal strip after nearly two years of war, and declared that Israel had “no choice” but to finish the job and complete the defeat of Hamas.
He argued that the best way to end the war was the recently approved military plan to take over Gaza City in order to clear the area of Hamas and make way for a civilian administration that is not connected to the Islamist regime, which led the Oct. 7, 2023 onslaught on southern Israel that triggered the war, or to the Palestinian Authority.
“Contrary to false claims, this is the best way to end the war and the best way to end it speedily,” Netanyahu said.
Describing his postwar vision for the Strip, Netanyahu said it had five principles: “Hamas will be disarmed. All hostages will be freed. Gaza will be demilitarized. Israel will have overriding security responsibility with a security zone to be established on Gaza’s border with Israel to prevent future terrorist incursions. A civilian administration will be established in Gaza that will seek to live in peace with Israel.”
Acknowledging “deprivations,” he said aid distribution would continue via safe corridors, larger number of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites and air drops.
No starvation
The Israeli premier again denied allegations of starvation in Gaza insisting that Israel allowed sufficient aid in throughout the war, while Hamas has disrupted aid flow and the United Nations has failed to properly distribute it.
“If we had a starvation policy, no one in Gaza would have survived after two years of war,” Netanyahu said.
He noted that Israel has provided two million tons of aid to Gaza since the outbreak of the war.
Middle Ages blood libel redux
The Israeli leader said that the international press had bought Hamas lies and propaganda “hook line and sinker,” and was defaming the Jewish state in a similar way to how the Jewish people were maligned during the Middle Ages. Then Jews were accused of spreading vermin, poisoning wells and slaughtering Christian children for their blood, leading to pogroms and violence which ultimately culminated in the Holocaust.
Under a banner that read “open your eyes to Hamas’s lies,” he singled out the New York Times for running a front-page photo of a “starving” Gaza boy who suffers from cerebral palsy and said he was looking into filing an Israeli government suit against the newspaper which “buried” a correction.
Responding to a question, Netanyahu said that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz had “buckled under” a “global campaign of lies” which led him to freeze military exports to Israel but said that Jerusalem would win the war with or without foreign support.
He said that he directed the IDF to bring more foreign journalists into Gaza which has mostly been a closed military zone.
Still, he conceded that Israel was losing the media war. “We will win the propaganda war by winning the war and winning the peace,” he said.
