Netanyahu Says He Opposes Israeli Settlements in Gaza After War

Last updated on August 7th, 2024 at 04:29 pm

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted in a new interview that he’s not considering plans to allow Israelis to settle and hold land inside the Gaza Strip after Israeli forces are done fighting in the Palestinian territory.

“I want a civilian administration that is run by Gazans who are neither Hamas nor committed to our destruction,” Netanyahu told CNN on Wednesday, May 22, during a discussion of his plans for how the territory should be governed after the current conflict.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper then asked Netanyahu to confirm that he was taking “off the table” a long-term Israeli “occupation.”

“If you mean resettling Gaza. Yeah. It was never in the cards,” Netanyahu replied.

The Israeli prime minister said he’s been consistent about allowing Israelis to take over the Gaza Strip after the current conflict and has expressed this position openly, even to the point of upsetting some of his constituents and supporters. He made these latest comments to CNN just days after two of his political allies, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi called for resettling the Gaza Strip during a rally commemorating Israel’s founding.

The Gaza Disengagement Strategy

Many Palestinians fled to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank during Israel’s founding in 1948. Israeli forces later began to assert military control over the Gaza Strip following the 1967 war. From 1967 to 2005, the Israeli government directly administered over the territory and allowed Israeli citizens to build settlements within the territory.

In 2005 then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon initiated a disengagement strategy, ordering Israelis to abandon their settlements in the Gaza Strip, and pulling Israeli forces back beyond the outer limits of the Gaza Strip. While ostensibly leaving the administration of the territory to the Palestinians, the Israeli government disengagement plan stipulated the Israeli government would control the land perimeter around the north and east of the Gaza Strip, its Mediterranean Sea access to the west and its airspace overhead, while Egypt has controlled the Gaza Strip’s southern land perimeter since the 2005 disengagement. The disengagement plan stipulated the Israeli government would also maintain control of the flow of electricity, water, and sewage services into and out of the Gaza Strip after the 2005 drawback.

Many members of the international community have supported a so-called “two-state solution” to the decades-old Israel-Palestine conflict. This solution entails recognizing Palestinian sovereignty over an allotment of territory separate from Israel.

Many of the proposals for the two-state solution entail granting Palestinians full governing control over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Some proponents of these two-state solutions have, in turn, described Israeli settlements within the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a hindrance to hopes of settling the long-running conflict.

While the Gaza “disengagement strategy” saw Israeli settlers leave the territory, Dov Weisglass, an advisor of Sharon’s, suggested this disengagement was actually part of a plan to impede a full two-state solution.

“The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that’s necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians,” Weisglass said in a 2004 interview with Haaretz, as the Sharon government took steps to implement the disengagement.

The disengagement strategy created different standards of government between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, entailing some level of Israeli involvement in the latter, with ostensibly no Israeli involvement in the former. At the time of the strategy, there was a growing rift between Palestinian political factions such as Hamas and Fatah.

Weisglass said during the 2004 interview that the disengagement strategy “legitimizes our contention that” there’s no clear way to negotiate with the Palestinians.

“What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. That is the significance of what we did,” Weisglass said. “The significance is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.”

Netanyahu:Israeli Troops in Gaza For ‘Foreseeable Future’

While he insisted he opposes Israeli resettlement in the Gaza Strip, which would effectively reverse the 2005 disengagement approach, Netanyahu told CNN that Israeli forces would still need to remain in the Gaza Strip after the current fighting ends.

Netanyahu has said defeating Hamas is one of his primary objectives in the current conflict.