Israel Will Not Withdraw from Gaza, Katz Declares Amid US Pushback

Peloni:  Once again, it appears that whatever bargain has been struck between Trump and Netanyahu, the issue of sovereignty was to be the price paid by Israel.

Despite American pressure, Israel’s defense minister vows to establish Nahal units to protect strategic areas in northern Gaza.

Israfan | Dec 26, 2025

DM Israel Katz. Photo by Itzhak Harari / Knesset Archives, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=156039013DM Israel Katz. Photo by Itzhak Harari / Knesset Archives, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikipedia

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has doubled down on his vision for a long-term Israeli presence in the Gaza Strip, declaring Thursday that Israel “will never leave the Gaza Strip,” despite mounting pressure from the United States to avoid any talk of reestablishing settlements.

Speaking at the Bnei Akiva and Makor Rishon national education conference, Katz outlined plans to surround “a large area of Gaza” and to deploy IDF-linked Nahal nucleus groups youth military-service units integrated with community service specifically in northern Gaza. These groups, traditionally used to help solidify Israeli presence in strategic areas, would be tasked with “protecting settlements,” Katz said.

His remarks come just days after a previous statement at the West Bank community of Beit El triggered diplomatic tension with the United States. There, Katz spoke of establishing new Nahal nuclei “in place of the communities that were evacuated,” suggesting a broader intention to reassert Israeli control over parts of Gaza.

Those comments prompted a swift and pointed response from American officials working out of the US Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) in Kiryat Gat, a facility that oversees the implementation of the Trump-brokered Gaza ceasefire deal. “The more Israel provokes, the less the Arab countries want to work with them,” a US official reportedly said.

In response to the criticism, Katz’s office issued a clarifying statement in both English and Hebrew: “The defense minister’s remarks regarding the integration of Nahal nuclei in northern Gaza were made strictly in security-related contexts. The government has no intention of establishing settlements in the Gaza Strip.”

Yet Katz’s latest comments suggest a hardened stance. He emphasized Israel’s “practical sovereignty” over parts of Gaza and described a rare historical window for asserting that control. “There are opportunities here that have not existed for a very long time,” he said.

Nahal nucleus programs, which combine military service with nation-building, have historically been a tool for establishing footholds in areas of strategic and ideological importance. Their reintroduction to Gaza decades after Israel’s full withdrawal in 2005 marks a significant policy signal, one that reflects a growing consensus in parts of the Israeli government that the status quo cannot return following Hamas’s October 7 atrocities.

With pressure building both internationally and at home, Katz’s remarks underscore a broader Israeli shift toward long-term security control over critical parts of Gaza. While the United States and other allies continue to push for restraint and de-escalation, Israel’s leadership is making clear that it will not compromise when it comes to protecting its people and securing its borders.

As history has shown, when Israel says “never again,” it means it.

December 27, 2025 | 4 Comments »

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  1. @frankadam@aol.com

    “Leonard Bernstein in Beersheba, Israel, November 20, 1948

    by Susan Gould

    Leonard Bernstein made musical history over and over throughout his lifetime, but only once did he also indirectly bring about unanticipated military history, when a concert of his put fear of a country’s army into the armed forces of its enemy.

    Among his many enthusiasms, even obsessions, the State of Israel and the Israel Philharmonic were right up there with music, peace, justice, human rights and love for all mankind – as well as being part and parcel of those central, undying passions. From 1947, for almost every year of his life, Bernstein donated his services to the orchestra, both in Israel and on tour, helping to mold it into a truly outstanding ensemble.

    Probably no concert by Bernstein and the Israel Philharmonic, or by anyone else, for that matter, had the extraordinary impact of the one on November 20, 1948, in the midst of the tiny new state’s War of Independence, when just about the entire Arab world was attacking.

    Back in April, 1947, within two days of his first arrival in what was then still Palestine, Bernstein had already felt a profound sense of having come at a crucial juncture in the history of the Jewish people. He was deeply affected by the Jews of Palestine and their longing – and determination – to have the independent Jewish state promised them by the British thirty years before in the Balfour Declaration. He wrote to Serge Koussevitzky: “There is a strength and devotion in these people that is formidable. They will never let the land be taken from them; they will all die first. And the country is beautiful beyond description.”

    In October 1948, a month after he returned, he wrote again to his beloved mentor: “How to begin? Which of all the glorious facts, faces, actions, ideals, beauties of scenery, nobilities of purpose shall I report? I am simply overcome with this land and its people.” In a postscript, he said: “I feel that I shall spend more and more time here each year. It makes running around the cities of America seem so unimportant – as if I am not really needed there, while I am really needed here!” Of the triumphant concerts, and wildly enthusiastic audiences, who all but worshipped him as a musical messiah, both as pianist and conductor, he described “the greatest being special concerts for soldiers. Never could you imagine so intelligent and cultured and music-loving an army!”

    On November 19, the UN ordered Israel to withdraw its troops from the strategically situated Negev-desert town of Beersheba, which had been captured by the army in October as one of many military steps in the new state’s struggle to survive, ongoing since its official establishment in May.

    The Beersheba troops defied the UN and stayed put. The very next day, they faced an unexpected invasion: thirty-five members of the Israel Philharmonic, led (across the desert, Moses-like, as well as musically), by Leonard Bernstein, arrived from Jerusalem by armored bus. Bernstein, as “musical adviser” of what had been the Palestine Symphony Orchestra when he conducted it the year before, had been touring the war-ravaged country with the ensemble for two months, performing for long-time citizens, new settlers and soldiers alike, a grueling schedule of forty concerts in sixty days. It was not unusual to experience nearby artillery fire mid-concert, and at one performance at Rehovoth, he was called offstage mid-Beethoven piano concerto and told of a possible air raid. According to the Palestine Post, “he returned to the piano as if nothing had happened.” The outwardly unflappable Bernstein said: “I never played such an Adagio. I thought it was my swan song.”

    Despite hope and undaunted perseverance, the country was the scene of great suffering, which Bernstein also observed, and in the course of Israel’s fight for independence, some six thousand Jews died and some twenty thousand were wounded. So it was only natural and logical for him to request orchestral volunteers for another concert for the troops – those defiantly dug-in at Beersheba.

    There in the desert, an archeological dig served as the concert venue, its high walls creating a three-sided amphitheater, and a makeshift stage was constructed. As reported by the South African writer Colin Legum: “The well of the amphitheater is alive with chattering soldiers – men and women of the front-line army, Jews from Palestine and the British Commonwealth and U.S., Morocco, Iraq, Afghanistan, China, the Balkans, the Baltic, even one from Lapland.” Local residents arrived, and some wounded soldiers were transported by ambulance from the hospital nearby. At 3:30 PM, the concert began. Bernstein played three concerti in a row, not only a bonanza for his listeners, but also a first for him: Mozart’s K. 450 in B flat, Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, a most extraordinary and ambitious encore! A violinist supported Bernstein’s chair when it began slipping along the precarious platform.

    Estimates of the audience-size ranged from one to five thousand, but in any case, when Egyptian planes reported sighting troops massing in large numbers in Beersheba, Egypt withdrew its troops from a position menacing Jerusalem in order to re-deploy them for what seemed an imminent Israeli attack in the Negev. Dr. Chaim Weizmann, who would become the President of Israel, explained the Egyptian reaction: “Who would take time in war to listen to a Mozart concerto?”

    Fast-forward to 1969, not far from the site of that historic concert, when the University of the Negev was founded, inspired by David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, whose vision it was to promote development of the Negev desert. His statement became the university’s motto: “Israel’s capacity for science and research will be tested in the Negev” and the university was renamed Ben-Gurion University of the Negev upon his death in November 1973. The university, which is public, has an enrollment of 17,400 as of 2008, with faculties in Natural, Engineering and Health Sciences; Humanities and Social Sciences; Management and Desert Research. It also offers several English-language programs including a Master of Arts in Middle Eastern Studies; International Health (in collaboration with New York’s Columbia University); and BA and MA courses in the Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics.”

    https://leonardbernstein.com/about/conductor/historic-concerts/beersheba-1948

  2. This means we are back to the 1949 – ’56 period when the US (& UK) tried to persuade Israeli withdrawal from bits of Negev etc beyond the UN 181 proposed demarcation of Jewish and Arab successor states in former British Western Palestine. NB the care with wording. Israel got away with staying put because the mouthy Nasser would not compromise and an idiot in the pay of the Mufti Haj Amin el Husseini (Arafart’s uncle) shot King Abdullah I of Jordan when he dared to negotiate with Israel.
    Israel was also able to stay in Sinai in 67 – 82 till Sadat signed a peace because the US tweaking Israel out in Jan 1949 and in March 1957 did NOT led to peace – only to more Arab bombast, threats and the 1956 and 1967 wars. Politics is NOT a game of soccer when after a goal everybody re-starts from the kick off positions.

    Katz and the rest of Israel must now be careful how they proceed short term and use only Nahal who are IDF in service and uniform so strictly if they camp on the North of the Gaza Strip – or sites in Judea and Samaria they are there as security units.
    Secondly remember how the USA tweaked UK and France out of Suez/Sinai in 1956 by selling their scrip and threatening to sell their governments’ bonds which would have been instant bankruptcy. Israeli Min of Finance must now check out what Israel as a government treasury and as an economy has invested in the USA as shares and US treasury bonds and what is at risk if the US sells Israeli holdings. Better Israel discreetly sells out at its own judgement and re-invests its eggs in several baskets including itself.
    As a modern economy depends on electricity and Israel depends on that power to desalinate the next jump is to expand the power sources beyond fossil fuel. There are solar (photo-voltaic) panels to put on every roof and wall facing from SW to SE and to float on every reservoir – which will also marginally save some evaporation. Second windmills just off shore for night “land breezes” and daytime “sea breezes” and on the hills of Golan and Negev pro tem.

    Third to take a leaf from the geo-thermal plants in California and Italy etc. Even in NON – volcanic areas at 3000 to 4000 metres (10k to 12k feet) there is geo- thermal heat within reach of present proven oil technology to circulate a fluid and extract heat to power steam turbines for Megawatts of electricity courtesy of heat exchangers on the surface. A heat exchanger is a “boiler” in which the water – or whatever – is heated by another hot fluid in coils or grids of pipes. This keeps separate the fluid going down and up the well and its earthly chemicals and lets the turbine system use clean water or another fluid or gas (CO2 ?) that boils below 100C.
    These twenty years have seen Israel double track its rail net and reach into the Negev and Galilee so any dormitory towns onthe pperiphery are now in reach of the centre and any big aliyah can be absorbed – BUT Israel has to be as independent as possible from energy imports to keep its desaliation going. IT will also be the moment to encourage teh agricultural sector to take some pages from the Netherlands where they already have vertical farming: Storage and hydroponics veg and flowers or herbs etc on upper floors and livestock on mid floors so that the waste drops to methane reactors and compost on the ground floor.