Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz has softened earlier statements in which he claimed the Israeli army would never fully pull out of the Gaza Strip. In a clarification issued later on Monday, his office stressed that the government has no intention of establishing settlements in the Palestinian enclave.
Katz had appeared to contradict repeated assurances from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as the framework of the United States peace plan. Speaking earlier in the day, he said that the Israel Defense Forces would maintain a permanent security presence inside Gaza and that a political and military unit would be formed to operate in the territory.
“We are deep inside Gaza and we will never abandon the whole of Gaza. This will never happen. We are there to protect and to prevent what happened,” Katz said, referring to the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.
His office later sent a written statement to journalists emphasising that the government “has no intention of installing settlements in the Gaza Strip.” It added that Katz’s comments during a morning address to settlement leaders about deploying such units in northern Gaza were made strictly in a security context.
Source: AMNA