The PM says ‘we don’t want to keep it’, and Israel intends to hand Gaza over to Arab forces to govern
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel intends to take military control of all of Gaza, despite intensifying criticism at home and abroad over the devastating almost two-year-old war in the Palestinian enclave.
“We intend to,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Fox News when asked if Israel would take over the entire coastal territory. “We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter. We don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body.”
He said that Israel wanted to hand over the territory to Arab forces that would govern it.
Netanyahu made his comments to Fox News before the outcome of a meeting he was due to have on Thursday with a small group of senior ministers to discuss plans for the military to take control of more territory in Gaza.
