Benjamin Netanyahu Insists Israel Doesn’t ‘Seek’ Gaza Civilian Casualties
Image by getty images
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel will take “whatever action is necessary” to halt Hamas cross-border rocket attacks from Gaza and restore calm but insisted his forces were doing their utmost to avoid civilian casualties there.
“We try to target military targets and unfortunately there are civilian casualties which we regret and we don’t seek,” Netanyahu told CNN shortly after an Israeli attack on a Gaza neighborhood killed at least 62 Palestinians.
He accused Hamas of deliberately targeting Israeli civilians and of using Gaza residents as “human shields.” Asked how long it would take Israel to complete an operation it says is intended to destroy Hamas weapons tunnels, Netanyahu said it was being done “fairly quickly,” but gave no time frame.
Asked whether Israel intends to reoccupy the Gaza Strip, he said: “Nobody wants to go to excessive military lengths.”
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
