Hamas will treat any force formed to govern Gaza as an "occupying" force linked to Israel, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks, an official from the terror organization told Al Jazeera Mubasher on Thursday.
The statement came after Netanyahu's comments to Fox News about Israel's intentions to fully control the Gaza Strip, even though it does not intend to maintain permanent control over it.
"We don't wanna keep it. We want to have a security perimeter, and we don't want to govern it. We want to give it to Arab forces that will govern it properly and not threaten us," he said.
This comes as the Security Council is expected to meet on the government's potential plan to occupy Gaza.
A Jordanian official told Reuters on Thursday that Arabs "will only support what Palestinians agree and decide on" after Netanyahu's comments.
"Security in Gaza must be done through legitimate Palestinian institutions," the source said. "Arabs will not be agreeing to Netanyahu's policies nor clean his mess."
Military, government disagree on Gaza occupation
IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir noted that the military disagrees with the occupation of Gaza, and promised to discuss this with the Security Council on Thursday.
"We are dealing with matters of life and death, in the defense of the country, and we do so while looking toward our soldiers and the civilians of Israel. We will continue to act with responsibility, integrity, and determination - with only the security and well-being of Israel in mind.”
He noted that the IDF has completed Operation Gideon's Chariots.
“We now have the ability to establish a new security reality along the border, while maintaining continuous pressure on the enemy. We will no longer limit our response. We will remove threats in their early stages across all arenas and continue working to achieve our goals,” said Zamir. “Our intention is to defeat Hamas and continue to operate with our hostages at the forefront of our minds; we will do everything in our power to bring them home.”