TIMES OF ISRAEL
Netanyahu: Israel to take military control of all of Gaza, but ‘we don’t want to keep it’
Stav Levaton
August 7, 2025

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday, ahead of a key cabinet meeting on the next stage of the Gaza war, that Israel intends to take control of the entire Strip, then hand it over to an unspecified Arab governing force. The premier said a “detailed plan” will be developed for this post-Hamas government, and that it will not place Israel in control of the Strip as a civil government, nor allow the Palestinian Authority to play a role. Asked in a Fox News interview if Israel will take over the entire 26-mile strip, Netanyahu said: “We intend to, in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza (sic), and to pass it civilian governance.” But, he stressed, “We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter, but we don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body.” READ MORE

ISRAEL HAYOM Amit Segal: The painful truth Netanyahu must tell the public This week, Israel’s team for the hostages and missing persons debated whether the video showing Evyatar David in Holocaust like conditions marked a shift toward a new threat to kill the hostages. Their conclusion: it did not. They assessed that Hamas was trying to use David for its “Starving Gaza” campaign and failed to realize that the footage showed the opposite, that Gaza is the one doing the starving. But Israeli officials believe the situation will change if Israel actually storms Gaza City. Until now, Hamas has used the hostages as a kind of “get out of jail free” card whenever it found itself in military trouble – and to extend the Monopoly metaphor, to send Israel back to the starting square, “GO”.

COMMENTARY Seth Mandel: Rising Sa’ar Israel had bent over backwards to produce a cease-fire agreement, and the pressure was on Hamas. Then the three stooges [Macron, Starmer and Carney] jumped into the fray to recognize a “state of Palestine” and signal to Hamas that these three countries had the terror group’s back. Hamas then blew up the talks, since the West made clear it would gain the benefit of a cease-fire without having to make any concessions to Israel—most significantly, it wouldn’t have to free any hostages. The lives this blockheaded intervention cost, and the damage it did to attempts to free Gazans from Hamas, make this blunder an unforgettable one. And I mean that literally: France, the UK, and Canada should not be allowed to forget it, not in the near future, anyway.