PM insists plan to conquer Gaza City is best, fastest way to end the war

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defends the recently approved military plan to take over Gaza City, calling it “the best way to end the war.”

“Contrary to false claims, this is the best way to end the war and the best way to end it speedily,” the premier argues, speaking about the plan at a press conference for foreign media in Jerusalem.

Outlining the plan’s strategy, Netanyahu explains: “We have about 70 to 75% [of Gaza] under Israeli control, military control. But we have two remaining [Hamas] strongholds. These are Gaza City, and the central camps and the Mawasi.”

The premier gestures to a map where the strongholds are “schematically presented,” with Gaza City in the north encircled, and the refugee camps in the central Strip grouped together with the Mawasi area, which lies farther south along the coast near Khan Younis.

The IDF has been instructed “to dismantle the two remaining Hamas strongholds in Gaza City and the central camps,” he says.

He adds that Israel will begin the plan “by first enabling the civilian population to safely leave the combat areas to designated safe zones. In these safe zones, they’ll be given ample food, water, and medical care.”

Addressing humanitarian concerns, Netanyahu says, “Our policy throughout the war has been to prevent a humanitarian crisis, while Hamas’s policy has been to create it.”

He denies allegations that the IDF enforced a starvation policy 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. Since the beginning of the war, Israel has let in “close to 2 million tons of aid,” he says. “If we had a starvation policy, no one in Gaza would have survived after two years of war. But our policy has been the exact opposite.”

He says Hamas has “violently looted the aid trucks” and deliberately created shortages. Because the UN was unwilling to deliver all of it, he says, tons and tons of humanitarian aid sat rotting on the Gaza side of the border. Now Israel is designating safe corridors for aid distribution, boosting safe distribution points managed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, and air drops by Israel and others. “The result has been a humanitarian surge… and hundreds of trucks have gone in in recent days.

Asked to provide a timeline for the new plan, Netanyahu says, “The timeline that we set for the action is fairly quickly,” adding that “We want to, first of all, enable safe zones to be established, facilities to be brought…, so the civilian population of Gaza City can move out.”

He says when Israel took over Rafah, it took “about eight days or six days” to move out the Gazan civilians there,” so “we think we can achieve a similar result” that safeguards the civilian population and enables the IDF to tackle the last major Hamas stronghold.

“I don’t want to talk about exact timetables, but we’re talking in terms of a fairly short timetable because we want to bring the war to an end,” he says.

Hebrew media reported last week that the plan to take control of new areas of the Strip could take as long as five months to implement.