Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to regain control of the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt, expanding Israel's mission to neutralize Hamas in a conflict he says will last months.
"The war is in full swing," Netanyahu told reporters Saturday of the fighting since Oct. 7, when the Palestinian militant group Hamas and its allies swept into Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages.
He said the buffer zone of the "Philadelphia" corridor, which runs along Gaza's border with Egypt, should be in Israeli hands.
"She must be closed," Netanyahu said. "It is clear that any other agreement will not provide the demilitarization we seek."
He did not elaborate, but such a move by Israel would be a de facto reversal of its 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, which put the enclave under exclusive Israeli control after years of being ruled by Hamas.
Netanyahu's comments on the buffer zone came as Israeli military forces continued an offensive that the prime minister reiterated would last "many more months."
After Hamas's surprise invasion in October, Israel launched a full-scale assault on Gaza, displacing nearly all of its 2.3 million residents and killing at least 21,672 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, with more than 56,000 wounded, and for thousands more are assumed to have died under the rubble./BGNES
