Israel expects to continue the war in Gaza until the end of the year in order to achieve its goal of “destroying” Hamas’s rule in the besieged Palestinian territory, a top security official has said.
Tzachi Hanegbi, the country’s national security adviser and a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Israel’s original war plan against Hamas defined “the year 2024 as a year of combat. We’re now in the fifth month of 2024, which means that this year we are expecting another seven months of fighting.”
The defiant comments in a radio interview come despite the country’s increasing international isolation and mounting pressure to end the war as Israeli forces step up their offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.