Middle East: “Israel will never withdraw from Gaza,” says Defense Minister Katz | EUROtoday

According to the protection minister, Israel won’t ever fully withdraw its troops from the Gaza Strip. “In Gaza, Israel will never withdraw. Within the Gaza Strip there will be a security zone, a significant security zone,” stated Israel Katz at a convention of the settler-friendly newspaper Makor Rishon.

This additionally applies within the occasion of a transition to the second section of US President Donald Trump’s peace plan and the disarmament of the Islamist terrorist group Hamas, stated Katz. The safety zone ought to run inside the Gaza Strip, he emphasised. In the longer term, Israeli settlement facilities could possibly be constructed within the northern a part of the coastal space, which the safety zone would then shield, he stated.

The politician from the right-wing conservative ruling celebration Likud as soon as once more contradicted Trump’s peace plan, which envisages a gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops from the coastal strip. After criticism following related statements on Tuesday, he initially backtracked. However, on the convention he stated: “I never put things in reverse.”

Trump’s plan states that the Israeli military ought to regularly withdraw from the Gaza Strip and that a world pressure needs to be chargeable for stabilization sooner or later. Israel is granted an unspecified safety presence alongside the exterior borders (“perimeter security presence”), which might stay in place till the Gaza Strip not poses a terrorist menace.

According to US particular envoy Steve Witkoff, the implementation of the primary section of the peace plan is making progress, he introduced a number of days in the past. The second section consists of, amongst different issues, a gradual withdrawal of Israel and the reconstruction of the devastated space.