“In our view, the Palestinians should be at the center of making these decisions, Gaza is Palestinian territory and it will remain Palestinian territory,” said the US diplomat.
Washington said yesterday it would oppose a new long-term Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country would take “overall responsibility for security” in the enclave after the war it declared ends. in the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.
“In our view, the Palestinians should be at the center of making these decisions, Gaza is Palestinian territory and will remain Palestinian territory,” Vedant Patel, a spokesman for the US State Department, said Tuesday during a briefing for accredited editors at the State Department. diplomacy.
“Generally speaking, we do not support the imposition of a new occupation of (the) Gaza, nor does Israel” seek it, he continued.
Israel unilaterally withdrew its soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, after 38 years of occupation.
Israeli authorities, however, have imposed a strict land, air and sea blockade on it since Hamas took power there in 2007.
The US government nevertheless recognizes that “it is impossible to return to the status quo” before the October 7 attack by militants of the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israeli territory, the deadliest since the 1948 attack by the State of Israel, always according to Mr. Patel.
“Israel and the region must be secure, and Gaza must not and can no longer be a base from which to launch attacks against the citizens of Israel or anyone else,” the US State Department spokesman added.
Mr. Netanyahu said yesterday Monday that his country would “indefinitely” assume “overall responsibility for security” in the Gaza Strip after the war, in order to prevent, according to him, any return of Hamas.
The Israeli armed forces have been relentlessly shelling the enclave and stepping up ground operations in retaliation for the October 7 attack that left more than 1,400 dead on the Israeli side, most of them civilians killed the same day, authorities said. More than 10,000 Palestinians, most of them also civilians, have been killed and 20,000 more injured in Israeli military retaliatory operations, according to the Hamas government’s health ministry.
Source :Skai
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