Israel’s Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said Israel should rid itself of responsibility for the Gaza Strip and cut all of its ties to the Palestinian enclave, including the cutting of water and electricity supplies.
The senior ministers call came after a day of missile exchange between the Israeli Armed Forces and Palestinian factions in Gaza.
Buried near the end of its report, the BBC acknowledged that “the upsurge in violence came after Israeli tank fire killed four militants in Gaza in two separate incidents at the start of the week”
Most of the Gaza enclave infrastructure has already been destroyed in conflict, while more than 96 per cent of water from the coastal aquifer where Gaza gets most of its water is undrinkable due to salinity.
The Times of Israel reports: “The time has come to change the rules of the game. I support the idea of separation from Gaza,” said Katz, who is also transportation minister. “There is no compromise and no concession, we will not allow harm to our citizens and not a trickle [of rockets]. I estimate that soon that matter will be decided.”
“We need to separate from Gaza, to stop the fuel and water, and to rely on military power as in the case with southern Lebanon,” Katz said. “There is an anomalous situation here that happened at the end of the disengagement, and we remained responsible.”
Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, ending its military presence and evacuating thousands of Jewish settlers. Israel continues to supply some of Gaza’s electric power needs and sells water to Gaza. After the Hamas terror group seized control of the territory from the Palestinian Authority in 2007, Israel and Egypt imposed a sea blockade on Gaza in an effort to prevent Hamas, which seeks to destroy Israel, from bringing in weapons. Goods are shipped to Israel ports, inspected for weapons or military capabilities, and then trucked into Gaza through border crossings.
Aid officials have warned that Gaza is facing a humanitarian crisis due to a deteriorated infrastructure that has left Gazans with inadequate supplies of drinking water and severe power shortages.’