Israeli Press
Ynet says Israel's army wants foreign troops to clear Gaza zones
Image credit: Israel Katz — Itzhak Harari via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) · License
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The Israeli army is examining a plan to bring international forces into parts of Gaza to demolish what it calls terror infrastructure, on the pattern it has used with foreign units in southern Lebanon, the news site Ynet reported on Thursday evening.
Elisha Ben Kimon, the site's military correspondent, wrote that Benjamin Netanyahu and the defence minister, Israel Katz, ordered the study after the prime minister's visit to an army position on the Yellow Line, the boundary behind which Israeli forces pulled back under last October's ceasefire.
Where the foreign troops would work#
The forces would operate in designated zones outside the Yellow Line, areas the army watches but does not physically hold, according to the report. Ben Kimon wrote that Israel would therefore withdraw from nowhere: international units would instead be tested on their ability to destroy tunnels and weapons sites in sectors the army has assigned them, in coordination with the United States.
The cabinet approved a pilot in Rafah in late July that was mainly humanitarian in scope. Thursday's report describes a much wider proposal that would move the international role from aid to demolition across several parts of the Strip.
Netanyahu told the briefing at the Yellow Line that "we control the ground here" and that Israel holds sixty per cent of the Strip, and repeated his commitment to dismantle Hamas's military capabilities.
Katz, speaking at a Ynet conference the same day, said that in his account eighty per cent of Gaza's residents want to emigrate, and blamed Hamas and the reluctance of other countries to receive them for the fact that they have not.
What the report leaves out#
Ynet did not say which countries would supply the troops, when a first deployment might begin, or whether the Board of Peace that oversees the ceasefire's stabilisation track has been consulted. Hamas has said since July that it will hand over weapons only in stages tied to Israeli withdrawal, and no Palestinian party has agreed to foreign forces entering areas under its control.
Michal Oziyahu, head of the Ashkelon regional council on the Gaza border, told the site that reconstruction must not proceed while Hamas "continues reorganizing." The army had made no announcement about the plan by Friday morning.
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