Two days after US President Donald Trump announced that Israel had accepted a 60-day ceasefire proposal in the Gaza Strip, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said on Thursday that a removal from the territory that allows the reorganization of the Islamic group Hamas “is not an option.”
“We believe that leaving, leaving Gaza and then simply allowing Hamas to manage, rebuild and attack us again, as they say they want to do, simply is not an option,” said Mencer in a press conference.
The spokesman added that the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 marked a point of inflection in the country’s security policy.
“We will not allow a few meters from our homes to install a jihadist terrorist organization that, at all times, expresses the intention to destroy us and works actively to achieve this,” he said.
The spokesman’s statements were made after Trump announced last Tuesday that Israel would have accepted a 60-day ceasefire proposal in the Gaza Strip and expressed the hope that Hamas would also accept the deal.
The truce proposal was made on the eve of the US President to receive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which will happen next week at the White House.
A 60 -day truce is the basic principle of the proposal submitted months ago by the White House envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, and that Israel supports from the beginning, but that Hamas has rejected on previous occasions for not contemplating Israeli withdrawal from the territory, nor the end of his offensive.
Hamas said yesterday that it defends a truce agreement that includes the end of the Israeli offensive against the enclave, the withdrawal of their troops and the help of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.
