Less than a month after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory was illegal and must end “as soon as possible,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country would not relinquish control of the occupied West Bank.
“This is part of our homeland. We intend to stay there,” Netanyahu said of the occupied Palestinian territories in an interview with TIME magazine published Thursday.
The Israeli prime minister also reiterated his opposition to the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state, suggesting he supports limited autonomy for Palestinians while Israel maintains security control over the occupied territory.
His comments are a blatant challenge to the United States, which says it views a two-state solution as the ultimate way to resolve the conflict.
“We don’t govern their territory. We don’t govern Ramallah. We don’t govern Jenin,” Netanyahu said, referring to Palestinian cities in the West Bank. “But we intervene and take action when we need to prevent terrorism.”
Although the Palestinian Authority has some administrative powers in the West Bank, the territory is effectively run by Israel, which controls its security, airspace, ports of entry and urban planning policies.
The Israeli government is also partly responsible for tax collection and the economy in the West Bank. It also has an alternative justice system for Palestinians in the territory, through its military courts.
Leading human rights groups have accused Israel of imposing a system of apartheid on Palestinians in the occupied territories.
In his interview with TIME, Netanyahu also said that Israel would continue the war in Gaza until it destroyed Hamas’ military capabilities and ensured that the Palestinian group would not rule Gaza in the future.
The statement comes as efforts are underway to reach a ceasefire under a US-backed deal that would see the release of Israeli captives in Gaza as well as an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.
The US State Department said on Wednesday that Israel and Hamas were working on “surmountable” final issues to finalize the deal.
Netanyahu suggested that some Arab countries would help create a Palestinian government in Gaza after Hamas is defeated.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara called Netanyahu’s plans “dreamy.”
“Certainly no Arab partner will intervene without the Palestinian Authority being in charge in Gaza,” Bishara said. “And that being said, we have no idea what is going to happen in Gaza because it is clear that Hamas is not prepared to give up a single inch of Gaza and it is certainly not prepared to lose the war.”
As Israel faces genocide charges at the ICJ for launching one of the most destructive military campaigns in modern history in Gaza, Netanyahu downplays atrocities against Palestinians.
He claimed, without evidence, that the mortality ratio of combatants to civilians in Gaza is one to one.
Of the nearly 40,000 Palestinians killed by Israel, more than 16,000 are children and 11,000 are women, according to the Gaza government’s media office.
Israel has also systematically targeted the enclave’s civilian infrastructure, destroying hundreds of hospitals, schools and places of worship.
Asked about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Netanyahu rejected accusations that Israel was limiting aid to the Palestinians. “We have done everything in our power to allow humanitarian aid to come in since the beginning of the war, we have allowed some 40,000 trucks of aid to come in,” Netanyahu told TIME.
Although the number of 40,000 trucks of aid may seem high, this is a drastic decrease in the amount of food entering Gaza. This represents approximately 130 trucks per day.
According to the United Nations, about 500 trucks entered Gaza before the war began.
Last month, UN experts accused Israel of deliberately starving Palestinians in Gaza.
“Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine throughout the Gaza Strip,” they said.