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Netanyahu: Israel Did Not Enter Gaza to Hand It Over to the Palestinian Authority

(Jerusalem Post) Tovah Lazaroff - Israel has no intention of handing Gaza over to the PA once the war is over, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday night as he rebuffed U.S. pressure to do so. "The Palestinian Authority in its current form is not able to take responsibility for Gaza," Netanyahu said. "After we fought and did all this, how could we hand it over to them?" He noted that PA President Mahmoud Abbas has yet to condemn the Oct. 7 massacre, which sparked the Gaza war, adding that there are Palestinian ministers who are celebrating the event. Moreover, the PA has a policy of paying monthly stipends to terrorists and their families, Netanyahu said, adding that it also educates its children to hate Jews. Netanyahu recalled that after the IDF withdrew from Gaza in 2005, it handed it over to the PA, which was then ousted by Hamas in a violent coup in 2007. "They [the PA] were already there, they were given Gaza and what happened? They were destroyed and chased out of there in less than a year....It is impossible to put in Gaza an authority that supports terror, abets terror, and pays terrorists." "There is another condition that I set for the day after: the IDF will have complete freedom of action in Gaza against any threat. Only in this way will we guarantee the demilitarization of Gaza." He added that Israel would only agree to a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the return of all the hostages.
2023-11-19 00:00:00
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