DEIR AL-BALAH (Web Desk) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back Saturday against growing international calls for a cease-fire, saying Israel’s battle to crush Gaza’s ruling Hamas militants will continue with “full force.”
A cease-fire would be possible only if all 239 hostages held by militants in Gaza are released, Netanyahu said in a televised address.
The Israeli leader also insisted that after the war, now entering its sixth week, Gaza would be demilitarized and Israel would retain security control there.
Asked what he meant by security control, Netanyahu said Israeli forces must be able to enter Gaza freely to hunt down militants.
He also rejected the idea that the Palestinian Authority, which currently administers autonomous areas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, would at some stage control Gaza.
Both positions run counter to post-war scenarios floated by Israel’s closest ally, the United States.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the US opposes an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza and envisions a unified Palestinian government in both Gaza and the West Bank at some stage as a step toward Palestinian statehood. For now, Netanyahu said, “the war against (Hamas) is advancing with full force, and it has one goal, to win. There is no alternative to victory.”
Meanwhile, several thousand people demonstrated in Paris on Saturday under the rallying cry “Stop the massacre in Gaza.”
The left-wing organizers called for France to “demand an immediate ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas militants.
“I came to support the Palestinian cause, for a ceasefire in Gaza,” said engineer Ahlem Triki, a Palestinian flag over her shoulders.
Hamas’s shock October 7 attack killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in Israel and 239 people taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
The Israeli air and ground military campaign in response has left more than 11,000 people in Gaza dead, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
“It is elementary that as activists or simple citizens, you go out on to the street to support the Palestinian people,” said 85-year-old trade unionist Claude Marill.
French MPs Mathilde Panot and Eric Coquerel, whose hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party has come under fire for an ambiguous stance on anti-Semitism, were present at the march.
Gaza ceasefire rallies also took place in other French towns including Marseille, Toulouse, Rennes and Bordeaux.
“This mobilization is essential, in the face of massacres,” said LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard at the demonstration of about 1,300 people in Marseille.
In Lyon, a Palestinian event promoting two books by a surgeon who regularly works in Gaza was attacked by ultra-right militants, leaving at least three people with minor injuries, according to police and witnesses Saturday evening.