Netanyahu says IDF will demilitarize Gaza after war

‘There is only one force that can see to this demilitarization – and that force is the IDF.’

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a press conference on Tuesday said that the IDF, and not an international force, will ensure the demilitarization of Gaza after the war.

“I want to say an additional word about ‘the day after Hamas’: Gaza must be demilitarized. And in order for Gaza to be demilitarized, there is only one force that can see to this demilitarization – and that force is the IDF.”

He continued, “No international force can be responsible for this. We have seen what has happened in other places where they brought in international forces for the goal of demilitarization.”

“I am not prepared to close my eyes and accept any other arrangement. I again call on the civilian population in Gaza to leave the areas in which we are fighting Hamas.”

Netanyahu’s statement during the press conference is consistent with his repeated insistence, against US and international pressure, that Israel will establish a military presence in Gaza after the war.

He told ABC in early November that Israel would have “security responsibility” for an “unlimited time” after the war is over.

The Biden Administration has expressed the wish that the Palestinian Authority should rule Gaza after the war and to set the stage for the beginning of a two-state solution.

However, Netanyahu denies that the Palestinian Authority is in a position to control Gaza.

In a press conference in early November, Netanyahu said that in Gaza “there will not be a civil authority there that educates their children to hate Israel, to kill Israelis, or to eliminate Israel,” he said. “There cannot be an authority there that pays the families of murderers. There cannot be an authority who didn’t condemn the massacre.”

In addition, “The massacre of the seventh of October proved once and for all that in any place that Israel does not control security-wise, terror returns, gets established, and ends up hitting us – and this has been proven as well in Judea and Samaria,” he said. “So I will not agree to relinquishing our security control under any circumstances.”