Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has outlined his plans for the next phase of the assault on the Gaza Strip including a post-war administration with neither the Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas nor Israel in a governing role.
Gallant unveiled his blueprint to the press on Thursday before submitting it to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet.
Under the plan, Israel’s military operation will continue until it has secured the release of captives taken on October 7, as well as dismantled Hamas’ “military and governing capabilities”, and removed any remaining military threats, according to an AFP report.
“In the northern region of the Gaza strip, we will transition to a new combat approach in accordance with military achievements on the ground,” Gallant’s office said in a statement.
AL-JAZEERA: Israeli bombing targeted sites in Gaza City, especially the Al-Tuffah and Al-Daraj neighborhoods and the Bureij and Shujaiya camps.
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Operations would reportedly involve air and ground strikes, demolishing tunnels, raids, and special forces operations.
It will include pursuing Hamas members in the south, reports say, where most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population have been forcibly displaced, with many living in tents and other shelters.
The operation “will continue for as long as is deemed necessary,” the statement said.
“Hamas will not control Gaza and will not pose a security threat to the citizens of Israel,” the plan indicated.
“Gaza residents are Palestinian, therefore Palestinian bodies will be in charge, with the condition that there will be no hostility to the State of Israel,” Gallant reportedly said.
In this video, Al-Qassam fighters are seen targeting gatherings of enemy vehicles and soldiers in the Al-Qarm area north of the Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/yJB4zqRcmt
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According to Gallant’s plan, Israel would also reserve its right to operate inside Gaza. However, there would be “no Israeli civilian presence in the Gaza Strip after the goals of war have been achieved.”
According to the Financial Times, Gallant said the Palestinian body controlling the enclave would “build on the capabilities of the existing administrative mechanism” in Gaza as well as “local non-hostile actors”. No further details were given of who these figures would be.
The minister also reportedly said that a multinational task force led by the US should “take responsibility for the rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip.”
Over 85 percent of Gaza’s population are now refugees in their own land, according to the UN Refugee Agency UNRWA.
The Palestine Chronicle visited the camps of displaced Palestinians in southern #Gaza pic.twitter.com/UpcF3Yy1d7
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Major Palestinian Resistance groups have repeatedly rejected US-Israeli post-war plans for Gaza.
In a joint statement issued on December 28 following “a consultative meeting in Beirut”, the groups stressed their condemnation and rejection of the “scenarios by Western and other pro-Israeli (political entities) of the so-called ‘day after’ in Gaza.”
“These are mere pipedreams that will not be realized now or in the future, especially after the signs of the enemy’s defeat began to appear, in its explicit acknowledgment of its deaths and injuries at the hands of our resistance,” the statement read.
The statement also reasserted the unity of Palestinians, and that there is no such a notion as a solution to Gaza, and another cause in the West Bank and a third in Jerusalem.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 22,600 Palestinians have been killed, and 57,910 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Palestinian and international estimates say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
