The Israeli Security Cabinet was meeting Thursday to consider the possible expansion of military operations in Gaza, with the goal of finally ending the war with Hamas terrorists, The New York Times reports.
During an interview on the Fox News Channel ahead of the meeting the Israeli Prime Minister outlined his plan.
"We intend to, in order to assure our security, remove Hamas (from) there, enable the population to be free of Gaza 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."
Jan Markell is Founder and Director of Olive Tree Ministries.
"Hamas does need to be finished off. If you don't, they just remain like cockroaches in their underground facilities and continue to send rockets throughout Israel."
In the interview, Netanyahu suggested Israel was not interested in maintaining permanent control over the entirety of Gaza. “We don’t want to keep it,” he added. “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.”
In the excerpt published by Fox News, Netanyahu offered few specifics about his plan. Some analysts have said that he has threatened to widen the offensive to compel Hamas to offer concessions in the cease-fire negotiations.
Hamas, in a statement on Thursday responding to Netanyahu, said his comments “represent a clear reversal of the course of negotiations and clearly reveal the true motives behind his withdrawal from the final round,” The New York Times reported.
Hamas’s response came as the security cabinet, a group of senior ministers, was meeting Thursday evening.
Even if the ministers vote in favor of seeking to take over the remainder of Gaza, it could be days or weeks before Israeli soldiers begin pushing deeper into the territory, The Times reported.
Markell says we have to harken back to what happened in 2005.
“And this is where it all began. Israel never should have pulled out. That was a George W. Bush fiasco that set this whole thing in motion. Israel gave up that land, and that was the first two-state solution. Well, how did that work out? The same way any future two-state solution will work out. It'll be a catastrophe."
