Israel’s Netanyahu seeks to ‘destroy’ entire Gaza Strip: Palestine

By Awad Rajoub

RAMALLAH, Palestine (AA) – Palestine on Sunday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of seeking to “destroy” the entire Gaza Strip.

“Netanyahu's insistence on a military solution in Gaza as an alternative to political solutions reveals his true intentions of destroying the strip and emptying it of its population,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Netanyahu "is seeking to gain more time to commit more mass massacres, deepen the genocide, destroy the entire Gaza Strip, and push its residents out of the territory,” it added.

The ministry called on the UN Security Council to "address Netanyahu's goals more seriously by adopting a binding UN resolution” to enforce a political formula agreed by all parties.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Palestinian territory since a cross-border attack led by the Palestinian group Hamas in which some 1,200 Israelis were killed.

More than 32,200 Palestinians have since been killed and over 74,500 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

*Writing by Ikram Kouachi