Netanyahu says ‘we are not retreating’ during Gaza visit

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday visited Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, where he vowed not to pull back troops despite a recent push by mediators to advance a US-backed ceasefire plan calling for their withdrawal.

It was the first time Netanyahu has visited the war-shattered territory since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect in October 2025.

“We control the area. We are not retreating. We are staying on this line,” Netanyahu said near the so-called Yellow Line, which demarcates the areas under Hamas and Israeli military control.

“We control 60 percent of the Strip, and we are not stopping, because we are eliminating the terrorists who threaten us, day in and day out.”

Israel has kept striking the Gaza Strip and its forces have made further inroads despite the US-brokered ceasefire, insisting it must eliminate threats from Hamas, which led the unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack against Israel.

International appeals to move to the next stages of the US-led peace plan have not stopped Israel targeting Palestinians it says are militants.

Netanyahu, facing tight elections in October, last month rejected a proposal for advancing to the next stage of the plan after Hamas said it had agreed to hand over its weapons.

The Israeli premier has vowed no military pullout until the Palestinian Islamist movement is “genuinely” disarmed.

On Tuesday, Israel said its forces and a Palestinian anti-Hamas militia captured the head of Hamas’s internal security apparatus during a ground operation in Gaza City that Palestinian health officials said killed four people.

Hamas’s Interior Ministry identified the man as Muein al-Arabid, and said he was an “officer in the internal security service”, but did not mention whether he was its chief.

“We are doing everything to reach our goal — disarming Hamas and demilitarising Gaza. Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel,” Netanyahu said Wednesday, adding that “there is still work left to complete — and we will complete it”.

Israel’s defence minister on Wednesday said the country had plans to remove Palestinians from the Gaza Strip but was waiting for the United States to figure out where to take them.

“There is no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration,” Defence Minister Israel Katz told a conference hosted by Israeli news site Ynet and newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

The Israeli government “is organised and prepared to get them out — by sea, by air, by every way possible”, he said.

Similar suggestions in the past that Gazans could be displaced from the territory entirely have drawn international outrage, as well as condemnation from Palestinians themselves.

Announcing the Gaza war ceasefire in October, Trump laid out 20 points for the territory that included no forced displacement.

Forced displacement of civilians in occupied territory is considered a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.

Israeli operations in Gaza have killed at least 1,334 people since the ceasefire came into effect, according to the Palestinian territory’s health ministry, which also operates under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

The Israeli army has reported five deaths in its ranks over the same period, as well as the death of one civilian contractor.