Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participated today in the discussion of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee and referred to the continuation of the war against Hamas and the possibility that another front would open in the north.
“First of all we will win in the south and then we will deal with the north. As a first step, we will push Hezbollah beyond the Litani River and later we will also have to take care of the organization itself. If we open two fronts we can find ourselves not winning decisively in either of them,” Netanyahu stated.
In his opinion, the Palestinian Authority cannot in any way be considered to be a solution for Gaza the day after the war. “Oslo was the mother of all sins. The difference between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority is only that Hamas wants to destroy us here and now and the PA wants to do it in stages. We cooperate with them against Hamas when it serves their interest and ours up to a certain limit. We decided a few months ago that we don’t want them to collapse so that Hamas does not rise up in Judea and Samaria as well.”
Netanyahu stated that the State of Israel will have sole responsibility for security in Gaza the day after the war. “Only the State of Israel will be responsible for the demilitarization of the Strip. The Gulf countries will invest in reconstruction and we will have to build an entity that does not want to destroy us, that will manage the civil administration there. We will allow anyone who wants to go out to do so. Today, Hamas does not allow this.”
We would certainly look forward to a large measure of peace for Israel upon the successful completion of this war. Now, as we read about talks of rebuilding “Gaza” and the potential for peace…all of this needs to be become a reality.