Israeli Army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy said on Tuesday that the war launched by Israel on the Gaza Strip will likely continue for several months, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman considered that Gaza must be disarmed and a temporary security zone established.
Halevy added to reporters on the border with Gaza that there are no quick ways to dismantle the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), stressing that “the Israeli army will reach the leadership of Hamas whether that takes weeks or months,” as he put it.
He added that they are fighting in the most complex conditions ever, and that the army will do everything to return those detained by Hamas to their families.
He also said that the army is close to completing the dismantling of the brigades affiliated with the Hamas movement in the northern Gaza Strip, in reference to the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, adding that they are currently focusing their efforts in the southern Gaza Strip, specifically the city of Khan Yunis and the central camps, as he put it.
He explained that the Israeli leadership will conduct in-depth investigations that will not exclude any detail, regarding the circumstances of what happened last October 7, in reference to the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation launched by the Palestinian resistance, led by the Al-Qassam Brigades.
Security area
For his part, Ofir Gendelman, Netanyahu’s spokesman, said that Gaza must be disarmed, and a temporary security zone must be established along the Strip’s border with southern Israel, in addition to inspection mechanisms on the border between Gaza and Egypt to prevent weapons smuggling.
Regarding the future of Gaza after the war, Gendelman said that in the foreseeable future, Israel will retain security responsibility in the Gaza Strip, but the expectation that the Palestinian Authority will disarm Gaza is an imaginary expectation, according to him.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller had previously stated that Washington wants to establish safe zones in southern Gaza, but going into the details of that during the war is very complicated, while US President Joe Biden rejected what he called the reoccupation of Gaza.
Recently, Biden said in a press statement that he did not ask Netanyahu for a ceasefire in Gaza.