As the Gaza death toll has topped 25,000, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday he told US President Joe Biden that he rejected Palestinian sovereignty in the Gaza Strip.
The two leaders spoke by phone on Friday for the first time in nearly a month, with Biden saying following the call that he believed it was still possible Netanyahu could agree to some form of Palestinian state.
Netanyahu’s office said in a statement issued on Saturday, “In his conversation with President Biden, PM Netanyahu reiterated his policy that after Hamas is destroyed Israel must retain security control over Gaza to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel, a requirement that contradicts the demand for Palestinian sovereignty.”
More than three months into a war that has killed more than 25,000 Palestinians and reduced much of the Gaza Strip to rubble, Israel is planning to wind down its ground operations and shift to smaller-scale tactics.
Nearly all of Gaza’s population has now been penned into two small areas: Rafah just south of Khan Younis, and Deir al-Balah just north of it.
Israel has given no indication of whether it intends to storm those towns but says it will not stop fighting until it has eradicated Hamas, an aim Palestinians say is unachievable given the group’s diffuse structure and deep roots.
