Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Monday that the citizens of Israel should embrace the word “occupation” and that the country will not leave Gaza even with another hostage deal.
Israel plans to occupy the Gaza Strip and stay in the Palestinian territory for an undefined amount of time, the Associated Press reported Monday.
“We are finally going to occupy the Gaza Strip,” Smotrich told Channel 12 journalist Amit Segal. “We will stop being afraid of the word ‘occupation.’”
“We are finally taking control of all humanitarian aid, so that it does not become supplies for Hamas. We are separating Hamas from the population, cleansing the Strip, bringing back the hostages — and defeating Hamas,” he said before adding that once a new offensive in Gaza begins, there will be “no retreat from the territories we have conquered, not even in exchange for hostages.”
The occupation of Gaza is expected to be a part of a larger expanded offensive with hostage negotiations at a stalemate. The Israeli military called up thousands of reservists to bolster its ranks before the planned operation.
Smotrich believes Israel can only retrieve the Hamas-held hostages by launching an offensive.
“The only way to release the hostages is to subdue Hamas,” he said. “Any retreat will bring about the next Oct. 7.”
Israel wants to defeat Hamas before working out a solution with Gaza.
“Once we occupy and stay [in Gaza], we can talk about sovereignty,” Smotrich said. “But I did not demand that this be included among the goals of the war. First, we will defeat Hamas and prevent it from existing.”
Israel plans to launch the massive ground operation if a deal isn’t reached by May 15, around the date of President Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East, Axios reported, adding that, without a deal, Israel would displace around 2 million people to a single “humanitarian area.”
“One thing will be clear: there will be no in-and-out,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Monday video message posted on X. “We’ll call up reserves to come, hold territory — we’re not going to enter and then exit the area, only to carry out raids afterward. That’s not the plan. The intention is the opposite.”
“There will be a movement of the population to protect them,” Netanyahu said of the “intensified operation.”
The alternative to remaining in a humanitarian zone would be for Palestinians to leave the enclave “voluntarily” for other countries “in line with President Trump’s vision for Gaza,” an Israeli official reportedly said.
Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the Israeli military chief of staff, said a full ground operation will jeopardize the hostages. “In a plan for a full-scale maneuver, we won’t necessarily reach the hostages,” Channel 13 quoted Zamir as saying in a meeting. “Keep in mind that we could lose them.”
He added that the war’s goals of defeating Hamas and rescuing the hostages “are problematic in relation to each other.”
Netanyahu said last week that the “supreme” goal of the war is to defeat Hamas.
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Returning the hostages is “a very important goal,” Netanyahu continued, but then added that “the war has a supreme goal, and the supreme goal is victory over our enemies, and this we will achieve.”
Israel occupied the Gaza Strip for decades until leaving in 2005.