Military expert: Israel's phased plan is to control Gaza, not to fully occupy it.

The military and strategic expert Brigadier General Elias Hanna believes that the Israeli occupation has adopted the term "control" instead of "occupation" in its plan regarding the complete occupation of the Gaza Strip, because occupation imposes a long-term military presence and an important security system.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, believes that his forces will enter Gaza, but Israel will not occupy or govern the strip, as Brigadier General Hanna states.

Netanyahu said in a previous interview with Fox News that he has no intention of retaining or governing the strip, and that Israel wants to hand it over to Arab forces "that do not threaten it."

The Israeli security cabinet approved Netanyahu's plan today, Friday, to impose control over the city of Gaza as part of a broader plan to completely occupy the strip.

The newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that unnamed political sources stated that the decision avoided using the word "occupation" and replaced it with "control," in order to evade responsibility for protecting Palestinians under international law, but the newspaper acknowledged that the actual goal is the occupation of the strip.

Brigadier General Hanna stated in his analysis of the military scene in Gaza that the plan to completely occupy Gaza will not be implemented today or tomorrow, considering the scale of the capabilities and means available to the Israeli occupation army and the measures it must take. For example, calling up about 200,000 reservists would require several months, and evacuating the city of Gaza of about one million residents could take until October 7.

In this context, Israeli Channel 12 reported that Israeli military officials said that controlling Gaza could take 3 months and would require 3 divisions due to the presence of explosive devices.

The military and strategic expert points out that the continued Israeli occupation in Gaza—if achieved—requires a security system that in turn necessitates a security mechanism to impose and maintain security, meaning that for every thousand residents, there should be between 40,000 to 45,000 Israeli soldiers to ensure security.

In explaining the reasons for the Israeli occupation's insistence on sending its forces into northern Gaza, Brigadier General Hanna said that the political authority in Israel set some objectives at the start of the war, the most prominent of which is what it calls the elimination of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), preventing it from returning to govern the strip, and securing the release of Israeli prisoners in Gaza.

To achieve these objectives, the Israeli occupation has devised military strategies that began to be implemented from the northern strip, then the Netzarim axis, followed by Khan Younis and Rafah in the southern strip, after which came the "Gideon’s Chariots" operation, but these strategies did not achieve their goal. Brigadier General Hanna stated that what is happening today is a new phase.