Source: Mondoweiss.net
Benjamin Netanyahu’s postwar plan would see Israel exerting direct control over a demilitarized Gaza Strip while permanently dismantling UNRWA and assigning “local officials” to govern civilian affairs.
Casualties
- 29,514+ killed* and at least 69,616 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
- 380+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
- Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,147.
- 576 Israeli soldiers killed since October 7, and at least 3,221 injured.**
*This figure was confirmed by Gaza’s Ministry of Health on Telegram channel. Some rights groups put the death toll number at more than 38,000 when accounting for those presumed dead.
** This figure is released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.”
Key Developments
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveils “postwar plan” for Gaza, where Israel would control security and play a role in civilian affairs
- Palestinian presidency rejects Netanyahu’s plan, calling for an independent Palestinian state.
- Israeli Finance Minister Ben Smotrich set to approve more than 3,000 housing units in West Bank as “Zionist revenge” for shooting operation outside Maale Adumim.
- Israeli forces launch series of attacks on Central Gaza, killing 40 Palestinians and injuring at least 100 others.
- Israeli forces re-enter besieged Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, as aid agencies strategize how to evacuate 140 stranded patients.
- Several Israeli human rights organizations call upon countries to restore UNRWA funding.
- West Bank: Israeli forces detain two ten-year-old children from Sinjil, north of Ramallah.
- UN Experts: Arms exports to Israel must stop immediately.
- Foreign ministers gathered for the G20 summit in Rio De Janeiro to discuss the importance of a two-state solution with an independent Palestinian state.
- Israeli Army Radio reports that it is “preparing for war” in Lebanon.
- Israeli airstrike kills two paramedics in the town of Bint Jbeil, Lebanon.
Netanyahu unveils postwar Gaza plan
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled a postwar plan for Gaza for the first time since the start of the war. The short-term objectives of the plan — to fully dismantle Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and secure the release of all Israeli captives — would be followed by the full demilitarization of Gaza, over which Israel would play a role in governing civilian affairs, similar to the way in which it currently controls the West Bank.
According to Haaretz, the Prime Minister’s plan would see the day-to-day civil affairs of the enclave administered by “local officials” and “professionals with managerial experience” who “must not be identified with states or organizations that support terror and must not receive salaries from them.”
Netanyahu’s plan also explicitly states that the United Nations Refugee and Works Agency (UNRWA) should be dismantled in retaliation for the alleged role of 13 of its Gaza employees in the October 7 attacks, for which Israel has not provided evidence.
Unsurprisingly, Netanyahu’s plan has come under fire from both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority’s office of the presidency. The PA President’s office has explicitly rejected Netanyahu’s proposal, which also states that the Israeli military would continue to have the “freedom to operate” in Gaza, essentially re-occupying the enclave….