Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Tzachi Hanegbi, said Thursday that in light of recent escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces must reoccupy the territory.
In an interview with Army Radio, Hanegbi said that he meant to establish a strategic goal of toppling the Islamic rulers of the Gaza Strip ? Hamas. In order to achieve this goal, he said, "you must go into the territory and hold on to it for a long time."
Hanegbi confessed that the decision to retake the Strip comes with a "complicated price tag, and has implications for our soldiers' lives as well as in the international arena."
Advertisement
Earlier Thursday, elite Israel Defense Forces soldiers killed one Palestinian militant and wounded another near the Kerem Shalom Gaza-Israel border crossing, foiling an attempted infiltration and attack.
A third gunman managed to escape the IDF special forces unharmed.
The militants had tried to enter Israel via the crossing, intending to carry out a terror attack, and then engaged in a gunfight with IDF soldiers from the Palestinian side of the Gaza border. There were no reports of casualties among the IDF soldiers.
Troops were still exchanging fire with militants some time after the attempted infiltration.
The Kerem Shalom crossing is used to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza. The army said the crossing was closed after the incident.
Israel has limited the flow of goods into Gaza since the Hamas militant group seized control of the area last June, and tightened the blockade in recent weeks following intensified rocket attacks from Gaza.
Meanwhile Thursday, one week after the terror attack at the Nahal Oz fuel terminal through which Israel supplies fuel to Gaza, Palestinian gunmen once again opened fire at fuel trucks at the same terminal. The gunmen fired at the trucks as those were transferring fuel into the Strip.
Israel suspended the supply of fuel at the terminal following the terror attack that left two Israeli civilians dead, and partially renewed the supply on Wednesday. Though Israel has designated the fuel it supplies for use in the Gaza power station only, the IDF believe that the militant Hamas rulers are confiscating the fuel for their own personal use, thus diminishing the amount of power available for Gaza residents.
Also Thursday, IDF paratroopers killed two Palestinian militants during a raid near the West Bank city of Jenin.
Palestinian medical and security officials said one of the dead was an Islamic Jihad militant and the other was a 16-year-old boy.
According to Israel Radio, however, the Palestinians were a local commander of the Palestinian militant group and his aide.
The IDF Spokesman's Office also stated that both Palestinians were militants, noting that soldiers found on their bodies an explosive device, an M-16 assault rifle with ammunition and a telescopic sight, night vision equipment and other military supplies.
According to the army, the incident began when IDF paratroopers surrounded a house where militants were holed up in the Kabatiya refugee camp near Jenin, and called on them to exit the building.
After the militants refused to comply, the paratroopers used weapons in efforts to force them out. In an ensuing firefight, according to the IDF, the soldiers shot dead two gunmen whom they identified inside the house.
IDF forces frequently raid West Bank towns in search of militants suspected of involvement in attacks against Israel.
Meanwhile Thursday, a Grad Katyusha rocket and several Qassams struck the western Negev Thursday, as Palestinian militants in Gaza stepped up rocket fire aimed at Israeli communities near Gaza, Israel Radio reported on Thursday.
No injuries or damages were reported in the strikes.
Palestinian militants have fired the longer-range, higher payload Grad rockets on many occasions, with one scoring a direct hit on a residential building in Ashkelon in March, and another rocket injuring 5 civilians in a strike on the city's marina earlier that month.
Thursday's violence came a day after three IDF soldiers from the elite Givati Brigade were killed Wednesday in an exchange of heavy gunfire with Palestinian militants next to the Gaza Strip security fence.
The army named the slain soldiers as Corporal Matan Ovadati, 19, of Moshav Patish, Sergeant David Papian, 21, of Tel Aviv, and Sergeant Menhash al-Banyat, 20, from a Bedouin village in the Negev.
