Gaza control plan stirs global anger

TDT | agencies

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Israel yesterday announced its decision to take control of Gaza City, triggering swift and widespread criticism from the international community, including Saudi Arabia, China, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the UN’s human rights chief. In a strong rebuke, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry posted on X (formerly Twitter), saying Riyadh “categorically condemns [Israel’s] persistence in committing crimes of starvation, brutal practices, and ethnic cleansing against the brotherly Palestinian people.”

In a separate statement, also posted on X, the ministry added that it “condemns in the strongest and most forceful terms the decision of the Israeli occupation authorities to occupy the Gaza Strip.” Under the newly approved plan by security cabinet, the Israeli army “will prepare to take control of Gaza City while distributing humanitarian assistance to the civilian population outside combat zones”, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said yesterday.

Before the decision, Netanyahu had said Israel planned to seize complete control of the Gaza Strip, but did not intend to govern the territory where nearly two million people are on the brink of famine.

“We don’t want to keep it,” the premier told US network Fox News on Thursday, adding Israel wanted a “security perimeter” and to hand the Palestinian territory to “Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us”.

Netanyahu’s office said a majority of the security cabinet had adopted “five principles”, including demilitarisation of the territory and “the establishment of an alternative civil administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority”.

Hamas denounced the plan as a “new war crime”, while staunch Israeli ally Germany took the extraordinary step of halting military exports out of concern they could be used in Gaza.

“Under these circumstances, the German government will not authorise any exports of military equipment that could be used in the Gaza Strip until further notice,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid denounced the cabinet’s move as “a disaster that will lead to many other disasters”. He warned on X that it would result in “the death of the hostages, the killing of many soldiers, cost Israeli taxpayers tens of billions, and lead to diplomatic bankruptcy”. Gaza residents said they feared for the worst, as they braced for the next onslaught. “They tell us to go south, then back north, and now they want to send us south again. We are human beings, but no one hears us or sees us,” Maysa al-Shanti, a 52-year-old mother of six, said.