Israel likely to control Gaza after war with Hamas, official says

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Amid speculation as to what will happen after Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip is concluded, an Israeli official has stated that Israel will likely maintain security control over the coastal enclave, the Times of Israel (TOI) reports.

The war began on October 7, when Hamas murdered 1,400 mostly civilian Israelis, and kidnapped over 200 more, in an attack which included what have been described as the worst atrocities committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Referencing America’s highly controversial and drawn-out control over Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, US President Joe Biden has repeatedly warned Israel that occupying Gaza after the war would be a “big mistake.” Up to now, government officials have said Israel has no intention of controlling Gaza after the Hamas war.

However, during a Hebrew-language briefing with Israeli journalists in Tel Aviv on Sunday, an official said: “I don’t see any situation in which Israel doesn’t have ultimate security responsibility in Gaza,” the official said. “It won’t be enough to do just a rehabilitation of Gaza,” the official said. “It must go through a process of ‘de-Nazification. This culture [of seeking to kill Jews] still exists in the Palestinian Authority.”

Concerning the threat to Israel from Iran-backed Lebanese terror group Hezbollah in the north, the official said Sunday that the government will invest in the army. “The IDF will be bigger. The IDF will deploy against a [massive] breach of the border, and not just a penetration of a few terrorist cells into communities.”

The official added that Israeli security forces are working to ensure a massacre like that of October 7 could not be launched from the Palestinian Authority-controlled area of the West Bank. “The possibility of a major change [in IDF operations] in the West Bank remains a realistic one,” the official said.

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