On Thursday, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat down for a brief interview with Fox News' Bill Hemmer. Mr. Netanyahu indicated that, to ensure peace and a return to civilized government in Gaza, Israel may have to completely take over that area and occupy it to remove Hamas and return civil order to that war-torn region.
Bill Hemmer: After this interview, you will go immediately into a meeting with your security cabinet. Will Israel take control of all of Gaza?
PM Netanyahu: We intend to. In order to A) ensure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza (sic), and to pass it to civilian governance that is not Hamas, and not anyone advocating the destruction of Israel. That's what we want to do. We want to liberate ourselves and liberate the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas. And you were in the Gaza Strip today. You met Palestinians who are fighting Hamas because finally they see that they have a future. They can rid themselves of this awful tyranny that not only holds our hostages, but (also) holds two million Palestinians in Gaza hostage. That's got to end.
Bill Hemmer: Are you saying, today, that you will take control of the entire 26-mile Gaza Strip? As it was, 20 years ago to this month, in 2005?
PM Netanyahu: Well, 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. We want to hand it over to Arab forces, that will govern it properly without threatening us, and giving Gazans a good life. That's not possible with Hamas.
At present, Israel is in military control of roughly 75 percent of Gaza, according to Mr. Hemmer. The 25 percent remaining is still under the control of Hamas.
Read More: Netanyahu: 'Cruelty of Hamas Has No Boundaries'
History, Recognizing Palestine, and the Fall of the West
Following the interview, PM Netanyahu was scheduled to meet with Israel's security cabinet to discuss next steps in Gaza. Allowing Jewish residents back into Gaza is evidently on the table.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to convene his high-level security cabinet on Thursday to discuss expanding the war against Hamas, including the potential full military occupation of the Gaza Strip.
The prospect comes against the backdrop of the 20th anniversary of Israel’s full disengagement from the enclave, as calls for resettlement — once confined to the political fringes — have entered the mainstream, including within the government, particularly in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.
Rebuilding Jewish communities in Gaza would be "a historic correction to a national injustice," Yitzhak Wasserlauf, Israel’s minister for the Development of the Periphery, the Negev and the Galilee, told Fox News Digital.
The ideal solution for Gaza would be a purely secular government, one that would treat all residents alike, whether they be Muslim, Jewish, Druze, or any other faith or origin, but in all honesty, that doesn't seem a very likely outcome. Not in this part of the world. Returning Jewish settlers to Gaza would give any remaining Hamas sympathizers a toe back in the door. That's wrong, it's unjust, but it's also very likely true.
But the first step, for Israel, may well be the necessary one of temporarily occupying all of Gaza and removing Hamas by any means necessary. That will be the job of months, maybe years, but as we've noted all along, there will be no lasting peace in Gaza, no lasting prosperity, no humane and civil government until Hamas is no longer a factor.
Gaza can and should be a modern, prosperous area. But that won't happen, it can't happen, under Hamas.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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