According to the Israeli report, the operations are less intense as all the Hamas units in the zone have been neutralized.
The Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, declared on Monday that the “intensive phase” of the war in the northern part of the Gaza Strip was over, and that the same would happen soon in the Khan Younis area, where the combat is currently focused in the southern part of the territory.
Gallant said that the soldiers were conducting less intense operations in the north of the Strip, “after neutralizing all the Hamas units in the zone”, on the same day that the Israeli Army announced the pullout of one of the divisions that were deployed in the area, where three more remain.
“The intensive phase will be over soon in the south of the Gaza Strip”, Gallant stated, referring to the clash of Khan Younis, a stronghold of Hamas in the south, without specifying a precise schedule.
The Israeli Defense Minister also affirmed that the Palestinians would be in charge of the Gaza Strip after the end of the war with Israel.
“Palestinians live in Gaza and therefore Palestinians will be the ones who govern it in the future. The future administration of Gaza has to come from the Gaza Strip”, Gallant said at a press conference.
“When the war is over, there will be no military menace from Gaza. Hamas will not have the capacity to rule or act as a military force in the Gaza Strip”.
He added that the future administration would be a “civilian option” but maintained that the Israeli forces would have “the liberty to act” in a manner that aims to safeguard the Israeli citizens.
Hamas, the Islamist group that has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, started a war with Israel when its militants crossed the border of the Palestinian land with Israel and assaulted settlements in the south of Israel on October 7.
The assault caused the death of around 1,140 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on the most recent Israeli data.
The Israeli counterattack has since then killed more than 24,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Health Ministry of the land.
In a separate event, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, urged on Monday for an “immediate” humanitarian truce in Gaza in a declaration in which he demanded the liberation of the Israeli captives held by Hamas and the delivery of “sufficient” aid for the Gazans, marking 100 days of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group.
“We require an immediate humanitarian truce” in Gaza to guarantee “sufficient aid reaches where it is required” and to “extinguish the fire of a wider war, because the longer the conflict in Gaza lasts, the higher the possibility of escalation and error”, Guterres said in a declaration to the journalists in New York.
“It is my obligation to transmit this simple and direct message to all the parties: Stop playing with fire on the other side of the Blue Line, lower the tension and cease the hostilities”, he said, before warning “that we cannot witness in Lebanon what we are witnessing in Gaza”.
