Israel-Hamas war: Netanyahu “did not talk about occupying Gaza” – L’Express

Ground fighting and the bombing campaign have intensified in recent days to “destroy Hamas,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday evening. “There will be no humanitarian truce without the return of the hostages,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “did not talk about occupying Gaza” after the war with Hamas, said Ron Dermer, Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs, during an interview Tuesday evening on the American channel MSNBC.

“We (Israel, Editor’s note) withdrew completely from Gaza 17 years ago and we recovered a terrorist state. We cannot repeat this, that’s obvious. Once Hamas is no longer in power and after the dismantling its infrastructure, Israel will have to have overall security responsibility for an indefinite period,” said Ron Dermer who sits as an observer in the Israeli war cabinet. Benyamin Netanyahu had already said on Monday that he wanted Israel to take “general responsibility for the security” of the territory after the war. An option rejected by Washington.

The organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) deplored on Tuesday evening the death of one of its employees in Gaza, killed along with several of his relatives in an Israeli bombardment on the Chati refugee camp on November 6. Mohammed Al-Ahel, a laboratory technician who had worked for MSF for more than two years, was killed during a bombing of the refugee camp which led to the collapse of its building, killing dozens of people, MSF said. in a message on its website.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), citing figures from the Hamas health ministry, says 192 health workers have been killed since the start of the war. Of them, at least 16 were on duty when they were killed, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Faced with the increase in acts hostile to Jews in France, the President of the Senate Gérard Larcher and the President of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet called on “all those who recognize themselves in the values ​​of our Republic” to participate on Sunday in a “great civic march” against anti-Semitism. “The Republic is in danger; its very foundations are under attack”, alarm the presidents of the two chambers of Parliament, respectively second and fourth personages of the State, in a column published by Le Figaro.

At the end of a national office Tuesday evening, the Socialist Party, which itself had proposed a similar initiative without setting a date, called for participation in this march, but judged the presence of the RN “illegitimate”, so that the far-right party has already announced that it will be there.

According to the ministry, “59 Canadians, permanent residents and members of their families crossed the border from Gaza into Egypt at the Rafah border crossing” during the day. “The first group of Canadians has left Gaza. Our team of officials has welcomed them on the Egyptian side of the border and is providing them with support,” Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said on X (formerly Twitter).

An investigation is open “for homicide”, explained Jim Fryhoff, sheriff of Ventura County, without excluding a possible anti-Semitic motive. But “the suspect has not been arrested. No arrest has been made in connection with this incident,” he added. The 69-year-old Jewish man, Paul Kessler, died of a head injury on Monday, after taking part in a pro-Israel demonstration on Sunday, at an intersection where a pro-Palestinian rally was also taking place, in the city of Thousand Oaks, northwest of Los Angeles. A confrontation took place between the two groups, which numbered between “75 and 100 people” between them, according to the sheriff.