The latest defense by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking to Fox News’ American audience today, is that Israel is not going to occupy and keep Gaza. His plan is only to take control of all of Gaza and hand it over to an unspecified Arab governing force. However, he has not only eliminated anyone he deems associated with the Hamas civilian administration, he also eliminates all of the Palestinian Authority, who themselves had pledged to govern with Hamas.
Asked if he will take over all of Gaza, Netanyahu said: “We intend to, in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza [sic], and to pass it civilian governance.” A Freudian slip, if ever one was made. He might have wanted to say, “to be free of Hamas,” but there you have it.
He added: “We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter, but 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 the Gazans a good life.”
