When the war ends, Israel will control security in Gaza “indefinitely.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this in his first statements about what the famous day will be like after the “destruction” of Hamas, the objective that Israel has set in its military campaign, which has caused more than 10,000 deaths in one month. dead – mostly minors and women – and a “forced displacement and a humanitarian tragedy of colossal proportions”, as the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, defined them this Tuesday.
“I believe that Israel will have, for an indefinite period, overall responsibility for security, because we have seen what happens when we don’t have it,” Netanyahu said in an interview with the American network ABC. The phrase leaves the door open to several options. To begin with, he speaks of “general responsibility,” which would be compatible with the presence of other troops in the Strip, such as the multinational force that the United States is considering in talks with its allies.
Even more so when Israel has made it clear that it does not intend to permanently reoccupy, manage day-to-day operations or rebuild settlements in the Palestinian enclave. That is, to reissue the regime that he maintained between 1967, when he captured it in the Six-Day War, and 2005, the year in which Ariel Sharon’s Government unilaterally evacuated all soldiers and settlers from there. Israel considers that, from that moment on, it has no responsibility for Gaza, although under international law it continues to have legal obligations over its civilian population, while it is still an occupying power.
In this context, Netanyahu reiterated his opposition to a “general ceasefire” without the prior release of hostages, considering it oxygen for Hamas. Yes, he would accept, he clarified, “small tactical pauses”: “An hour here, an hour there… we have had them before. We will check the circumstances to allow goods to enter, humanitarian goods, or hostages to leave, individual hostages.”
Israeli political and military leaders are talking these days that, once the Hamas government and militia are liquidated, the army must maintain the ability to enter Gaza at will to carry out raids, targeted assassinations and arrests. The last one, this Tuesday, was the Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, who pointed out in Parliament that the Armed Forces “will retain full freedom to act in any situation in which there is some type of threat from Gaza.”
The statements outline a situation similar to that which exists in the 18% of the occupied territory of the West Bank, where the main towns and, therefore, the majority of the population are located. It is the so-called zone A, according to the terminology of the Oslo Accords in 1993. There, the forces of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) control security and coordinate with the Israeli forces, but the latter make incursions when they deem it necessary. Every day, in the last month – following the Hamas attack that killed some 1,400 people – in which they have carried out hundreds of arrests and killed more than 130 Palestinians, including with aerial bombardments, as at the time of the Second Intifada (2000-2005).
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All of Gaza is technically zone A, except that the ANP has not played its role there since 2007, when Hamas men prevailed in a week of street clashes with Al Fatah (the rival faction led by Abbas), a year after winning the elections. elections.
POOL (via REUTERS)
Netanyahu cryptically assured that the Gaza Government will remain in the hands of “those who do not want to follow the path of Hamas,” without clarifying whether he is referring to the ANP. Last Sunday, its president, Mahmud Abbas, was open to that possibility, as long as it is accompanied by a horizon of a peace agreement that implies the creation of a Palestinian State. “We will fully assume our responsibilities within the framework of a comprehensive political solution that includes the entire West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip,” he said, according to the official Palestinian agency Wafa.
Long distances on foot
Meanwhile, the bombings do not stop: neither in the north nor in the south of Gaza, the area to which Israel orders the inhabitants to go while the armored vehicles surround Gaza capital, and the only one to which humanitarian aid enters from Egypt.
The roads that lead to Saladin, the highway that runs vertically through Gaza, are so damaged that entire families (with children, the elderly and people with disabilities) are forced to travel long distances on foot carrying their belongings, as highlighted in their latest report. the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and can be seen in the images coming from inside Gaza. The OCHA points out that some 5,000 people headed south this Monday, during the six hours in which Israel opened a “humanitarian corridor” that few dare to take because there have been bombings along the way and because the Israeli army acts in both halves of the Strip. A day before there were 2,000. The Israeli army claims that Hamas is preventing the population from escaping.
It is estimated that around 300,000 Gazans remain in the north, the area hardest hit by the bombings that are reducing Gaza to rubble. According to United Nations data, almost 45% of buildings throughout Gaza have been affected by these unprecedented attacks: more than 40,000 are directly destroyed or uninhabitable and another 220,000 damaged to a greater or lesser extent. Aerial images show the destruction of entire neighborhoods; and others, recorded from vehicles or on foot, rows of buildings that have collapsed or that have lost their exterior walls.
The Palestinian militias captured more than 240 people in their attack on the 7th and pressure is growing in Israel for their release within the framework of an agreement. According to Abu Obeida, the spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezedin Al Qassam Brigades, which holds most of them, intense and constant Israeli bombing has already killed more than 60.
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