Netanyahu Rival Gantz Criticizes Stance on Philadelphi, Urges Hostage Deal

FILED - 19 October 2022, Israel, Tel Aviv: The then Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz speaks during a pre-election event at the Manufacturers Association of Israel. Photo: Ilia Yefimovich/dpa
FILED - 19 October 2022, Israel, Tel Aviv: The then Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz speaks during a pre-election event at the Manufacturers Association of Israel. Photo: Ilia Yefimovich/dpa
TT

Netanyahu Rival Gantz Criticizes Stance on Philadelphi, Urges Hostage Deal

FILED - 19 October 2022, Israel, Tel Aviv: The then Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz speaks during a pre-election event at the Manufacturers Association of Israel. Photo: Ilia Yefimovich/dpa
FILED - 19 October 2022, Israel, Tel Aviv: The then Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz speaks during a pre-election event at the Manufacturers Association of Israel. Photo: Ilia Yefimovich/dpa

Israel does not need to keep troops in the southern Gazan border area for security reasons and should not be used as a reason to prevent a deal to bring back remaining hostages from the Gaza Strip, a longtime military veteran said on Tuesday.
Benny Gantz, a former general and chief of staff who had been part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war cabinet until he quit in June, said Iran, not the so-called Philadelphi corridor, on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt, was Israel's main existential threat.
In a news conference in response to comments on Monday by Netanyahu, who held firm in his belief that Israel needed troops in Philadelphi, Gantz said that while the corridor was important to prevent Hamas and other Palestinian militants from smuggling weapons into Gaza, soldiers would be "sitting ducks" and won't stop tunnels.
He also rebutted Netanyahu's assertion that if Israel were to pull out from Philadelphi, international pressure would make it difficult to return.
"We will be able to return to Philadelphi if and when we are required," Gantz said, also calling for new elections.
"If Netanyahu does not understand that after October 7 everything has changed ... and if he is not strong enough to withstand the international pressure to return to Philadelphi, let him put down the keys and go home."
The issue of the Philadelphi corridor has been a major sticking point in efforts to secure a deal to halt the fighting in Gaza and return Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Some 101 hostages are still being held in Gaza.
Netanyahu's stance on the negotiations, which have been continuing for weeks while showing little sign of a breakthrough, has frustrated allies, including the United States, and widened a rift with his own defense minister, Yoav Gallant.
"The story is not Philadelphi but the lack of making truly strategic decisions," said Gantz.
He added there was a plan in place to block underground Hamas tunnels with a barrier but that Netanyahu has not promoted this politically.
While Gantz, head of a centrist party that is seen as the largest threat to head a new government, was speaking as thousands of Israelis protested for a third straight day in Tel Aviv in support of a deal to bring back the hostages.
"We need to bring about a deal - either in stages or in one stage," said Gantz, a former defense minister, who also said Israel needed to mount an attack on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon to stop daily rocket fire and allow displaced citizens of the north to return home.
Responding to Gantz, Netanyahu said in a statement that since Gantz and his party left the government, Israel has eliminated key Hamas and Hezbollah leaders and seized the Philadelphi corridor, "the lifeline by which Hamas arms itself".
"Whoever does not contribute to the victory and the return of the hostages would do well not to interfere," he said.



Israeli Strikes in Gaza Kill More Than a Dozen Palestinians

Palestinians take shelter from the Israeli bombardment at a school in Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians take shelter from the Israeli bombardment at a school in Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
TT

Israeli Strikes in Gaza Kill More Than a Dozen Palestinians

Palestinians take shelter from the Israeli bombardment at a school in Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians take shelter from the Israeli bombardment at a school in Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Israeli air raids in the Gaza Strip killed more than a dozen people overnight into Saturday morning, hospital and local authorities said, as health workers were wrapping up the second phase of an urgent polio vaccination campaign designed to prevent a large-scale outbreak in the territory.

The nine-day campaign run by the UN health agency and its partners began last Sunday in central Gaza and aims to vaccinate 640,000 children under the age of 10, an ambitious effort during a devastating war that has destroyed Gaza's health care system and much of its infrastructure.

The second phase of vaccinations in the southern part of the strip was in its final day Saturday, the Gaza Health Ministry said, before moving to the north and concluding on Monday. The ministry designated dozens of points across the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah for people to visit with their children to receive the vaccines.

Israel meanwhile kept up its military offensive. In central Gaza’s urban refugee camp of Nuseirat, Al-Awda Hospital said it had received the bodies of nine people killed in two separate air raids. One had hit a residential building in the early hours of Saturday, killing four people and wounding at least 10, the hospital said, while another five people were killed in a strike on a house in the western part of Nuseirat.

Separately, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, central Gaza’s main hospital in the town of Deir al-Balah, said a woman and her two children were killed in another strike on a house in the nearby urban refugee camp of Bureij early Saturday.

In the northern part of the Gaza Strip, an airstrike on a school-turned-shelter for displaced people in the town of Jabaliya killed at least four people and wounded about two dozen others, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense authority, which operates under the territory’s Hamas-run government.

Violence has also spiked in the occupied West Bank, with a more than weeklong military operation in the town of Jenin leaving dozens of dead and a trail of destruction.

On Friday, a 13-year-old girl and an American protester were reported shot and killed in separate incidents in the West Bank.

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26. of Seattle, who also holds Turkish nationality, died after being shot in the head on Friday, two Palestinian doctors said.

Witnesses to the shooting said she had posed no threat to Israeli forces and was shot during a moment of calm following clashes earlier in the afternoon.

The White House has said it was “deeply disturbed” by the killing and has called on Israel to investigate. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity” in the area of the protest.