JERUSALEM/ ISTANBUL

Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday vowed that Tel Aviv will never fully withdraw from the Gaza Strip or occupied Syrian territories, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported.

“We are located deep inside Gaza and we will never leave all of Gaza,” Katz told a press conference in the Beit El settlement near Ramallah in the central West Bank

He also pledged to establish new military bases in northern Gaza, instead of the settlements that were evacuated after the Israeli withdrawal in 2005.

“When the time comes, in northern Gaza ... we will build Nahal units instead of the (Israeli) communities that were displaced,” he said, praising the incumbent Israeli cabinet as a “settlement” government.

Nahal sites are a military program in which groups of young Israelis volunteer together and later form civilian communities, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz.

According to the Times of Israel portal, Katz’s remarks about building settlements in northern Gaza pose a challenge to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Washington. The premier is expected to visit the US later this month for talks with US President Donald Trump.

Although the Israeli government has not issued clarification regarding Katz’s statements, settler leaders and opponents viewed it as a call for settlement building.

Katz’s office, however, clarified in a statement that the government does not intend to establish any settlements in the Gaza Strip.

It claimed that the defense minister’s reference to setting up Nahal outposts in northern Gaza “were made solely in a security context.”

Around 750,000 illegal Israeli settlers live in hundreds of settlements across the West Bank, including 250,000 in East Jerusalem. Illegal settlers carry out daily attacks against Palestinians with the aim of forcibly displacing them.

Regarding Israeli violations of Syrian sovereignty, Katz said: “We will not move an inch from Syria,” without providing further details.

Syrian government data shows that since December 2024, Israel has carried out over 1,000 airstrikes on Syria and more than 400 cross-border raids into the southern provinces.

After the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in late 2024, Israel expanded its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights by seizing the demilitarized buffer zone, a move that violated a 1974 agreement with Syria.