The murderous terrorist organization Hamas has harshly criticized comments made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview with Fox News regarding Israel's plans to take control of Gaza.
In the interview, Netanyahu was asked if Israel would take control of all of Gaza. He answered that "we intend to, in order to ensure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of [Hamas], and to pass it to civilian governance that is not Hamas and not anyone who seeks the destruction of Israel. We want to liberate ourselves and the people of Gaza from the awful terror of Hamas."
When asked if Israel wants to reverse the Disengagement from Gaza that was carried out 20 years ago this month, Netanyahu responded: "We don't want to keep it. We want a security perimeter, [but] we don't want to govern it. We don't want to be there as a governing body. We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us, and giving Gazans a good life. That's not possible with Hamas."
In response, Hamas issued a statement claiming that substantial progress had been made toward a "final agreement" during recent negotiations. However, according to the statement, Netanyahu pulled out of the talks and exposed his true intentions.
The statement further accused Netanyahu of expanding Israel’s military campaign, asserting that he intended to "sacrifice the hostages for personal reasons and due to his extremist ideological agenda."
Hamas also declared, "The Gaza Strip will not surrender, and the campaign will be tough and exact a heavy price from Israel and the IDF."