Canberra Times / Australian Associated Press | 12.12.23
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant says Israel has no intention of staying permanently in the Gaza Strip and that it is open to discussing alternatives about who would control the territory, as long as it was not a group hostile to Israel.
“Israel will take any measures in order to destroy Hamas but we have no intention to stay permanently in the Gaza Strip. We only take care of our security and the security of our citizens alongside the border with Gaza,” Gallant told reporters.
Gallant also said that Israel was open to possibly reaching an agreement with militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, on condition any agreement included a safe zone along the border and proper guarantees.
“We will have the ability for destructive action and reaction, with results like those we see in Gaza. I assume Hezbollah takes that into account,” he said.
“If Hezbollah will allow an agreement process, and I won’t go now into its details, but clearly it cannot be that it does not include a situation in which there is a safe distance from our fence to forces that could shoot into Israeli territory or forces that could take action inside Israel. If this is possible, with the appropriate guarantee, we can talk about it.”
Israeli officials on Monday denied they intended to push Palestinians seeking refuge from its bombardment of Gaza over the border into Egypt as international relief agencies said hunger was spreading among the besieged enclave’s civilian population.
Amid the worsening humanitarian crisis, Hamas fighters and Israeli troops fought across the territory, with the militants trying to block Israeli tanks from advancing through the shattered streets.
The Gaza health ministry said 18,205 people had been killed and 49,645 wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza in just over two months of warfare – hundreds of them since the United States vetoed a proposal for a ceasefire at the United Nations Security Council on Friday.
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes and residents say it is impossible to find refuge or food in the densely populated enclave.
One Palestinian told Reuters he had not eaten for three days and had to beg for bread for his children.
“I pretend to be strong but I am afraid I will collapse in front of them at any moment,” he said by telephone, declining to be named for fear of reprisals.
UNRWA, the United Nations body responsible for Palestinian refugees, said some people were arriving at its health centres and shelters carrying their dead children.
“We are on the verge of collapse,” it said on X.
Aid agencies have also warned of a breakdown in social order as the situation worsens.
On Sunday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he feared a mass displacement into Egypt.
On Saturday, UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said that pushing Gazans closer to the border pointed to attempts to move them into Egypt.
Jordan also accused Israel on Sunday of seeking “to empty Gaza of its people”.
The Israeli government on Monday denied this was its aim.
Spokesman Eylon Levy called the accusation “outrageous and false”.
Levy said his country was defending itself from the “monsters” who had attacked Israel in a cross-border attack on October 7.
In that raid, the deadliest in Israel’s history, Hamas gunmen killed 1200 people, mostly civilians, and took 240 hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
About 100 have since been freed.
The action triggered an Israeli retaliatory assault and brought the bloodiest period of warfare of the decades-long Israel-Palestinian conflict.
The border with Egypt is the only way out of Gaza at present but officials in Cairo have warned they will not allow Gazans into its territory, fearing they would not be able to return.
UN officials say 1.9 million people – 85 per cent of Gaza’s population – are displaced and describe the conditions in the southern areas where they have concentrated as hellish.