- Israeli Ambassador Azar said Israel may take full control of the Gaza Strip to eliminate Hamas
- The initial military target will be Gaza City, the centre of Hamas operations
- Israel plans to evacuate civilians to southern Gaza for humanitarian aid access
Israeli Ambassador to India Reuven Azar has said that Tel Aviv can take control of the entire Gaza Strip to eliminate Hamas and make sure the Palestinian group "can never attack again". Elaborating on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new "Gaza plan", Azaz said the military will first target Gaza city, where Hamas operations are believed to be centred.
"Hamas has not given up its weapons. Our aims are very clear. We want to make sure that Hamas cannot attack us again. For that, they have to renounce their weapons and leave the Gaza Strip, and they have to bring back our hostages. Now, if they are unwilling to do this diplomatically, we'll have to take military action. And this is exactly what we're going to do," he said while talking to NDTV.
Last week, Israeli PM Netanyahu said Israel plans to widen its coming offensive beyond Gaza City to the last areas not yet under Israeli control, and where most of Gaza's 2 million residents have sought shelter as the territory slides toward famine.
Azar said the exact date and timelines to put the plan in action are not finalised yet, but the military planning for it is underway.
"I think that we don't have a date for the commencement, but we know this is going to be a long operation because we are talking here about a city. And we know from taking (control of) Rafah and from taking the northern part of the Gaza Strip, places like Jabalia and Beit Hanoun, that Hamas is booby-trapping every street and every edifice," the envoy said.
Talking about the plan, he said the Israeli military will "take the population" out of areas that will be targeted and rehabilitate them in designated areas in the southern Gaza Strip, where they can get access to humanitarian assistance--from food to medical services.
"There are a lot of underground installations...we have to destroy all these structures because they are booby-trapping," he said.
"So all of that is being planned because we want to minimise civilian casualties. But we are determined, we don't have any choice. We have to defend ourselves. We won't agree for Hamas to come back to pose a menace to our borders, to our communities, to our people. And therefore, if they don't want to stop the war, which can happen today, if they renounce their weapons, they have been defeated. They don't have the military machinery that they had before."
When it was pointed out that the new plan has also sparked controversy in Israel, with families of the remaining hostages fearing another military escalation could doom their loved ones, the Israeli envoy assured the plan would work.
"We've seen that in a combination of military pressure and diplomacy, we have been able to retrieve 205 hostages, 148 of them alive. So this system of putting military pressure and negotiating has borne fruit," he said.
Israel's Gaza Plan
Israel announced last week its plans to take over Gaza City, where it has already carried out major raids and heavy bombardment throughout the war. On Sunday, Netanyahu told a news conference that operations would be expanded into the “central camps" and beyond.
He appeared to be referring to the built-up Nuseirat and Bureij camps in central Gaza that date back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation. Israel has carried out near-daily airstrikes in the camps since the start of the war, but no major ground operations.
Netanyahu referred to Gaza City, the central camps and Muwasi — a vast cluster of displacement camps along the coast — as Hamas strongholds. These areas, along with the central city of Deir al-Balah, are the only parts of Gaza that have not been almost completely destroyed in previous Israeli operations. They are also areas where Hamas may be holding hostages in tunnels or other secret locations.
