After 13 days of massive air strikes and shortly before the launch of a ground invasion, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant delivered this Friday the most detailed explanation of his country’s political and military plans in Gaza. It is a three-stage plan that would end with “the creation of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel” without permanently stationing soldiers in Gaza to manage the daily lives of its 2.3 million residents. In 2005, the government of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon evacuated the 8,000 settlers and soldiers it had in Gaza, which Egypt had captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.
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Israel, Gallant explained, is now in the first phase: “a military campaign that includes bombing and later maneuvers [terrestres], with the aim of neutralizing terrorists and destroying Hamas’ infrastructure.” Military aircraft are bombing the Gaza Strip “at a scale not seen in decades” to “prepare the ground for the ground invasion” and conducting small raids to “gather information about the hostages” in the Gaza Strip, said army spokesman Daniel Hagari during his daily appearance before the media at the headquarters in Tel Aviv. According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Friday’s attacks left 4,137 people dead and more than 13,000 injured. Gallant assured the troops stationed at the border this Thursday that they would “soon” see Gaza “from the inside.”
The second phase “will require lower-intensity operations with the aim of eliminating strongholds of resistance,” Gallant said at a meeting at the Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv with members of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Israeli parliament. That means keeping troops on the ground to put an end to the insurgency, which would predictably be less organized.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant speaks to a group of soldiers near the Gaza border on October 19. ABIR SULTAN (EFE)
The final phase would be to “eliminate Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip and create a new security reality for the citizens of Israel.” Gallant did not specify who would be put in charge of running the Gaza Strip after the fall of the Hamas government.
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Technically, Israel still has responsibility for the people of Gaza. The area was no longer considered to be under military occupation after the withdrawal in 2005, as Israel retains control over its air and sea space. Israel defends that this is not the case because it no longer has troops or settlers on the ground and because the entire Gaza Strip belongs to Zone A, i.e. The Oslo Accords were signed in 1993. The Palestinian Authority has been out of control of Gaza since 2007, after Hamas seized power there by driving out forces loyal to the rival Fatah faction. A year earlier, the Islamist movement had won the elections, but the international community did not recognize the new government because it refused to recognize Israel and explicitly renounced violence.
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