Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz is walking back his comments that Israel plans to resettle the Gaza Strip, after suggesting that the Israeli military would never leave the besieged enclave. Speaking at a settlement in the occupied West Bank, Katz originally said that Israel could establish military outposts in northern Gaza.

Israel Katz: “We are deep in Gaza, and we will never leave Gaza. We are there to defend, to prevent what happened. We are standing, as we said. We trust the rock of Israel and the IDF in defending Israel in a fierce battle between jihadist enemies of this kind and Israeli enemies of this kind.”

Since the U.S.-brokered ceasefire went into effect in October, Israel has constructed at least 13 new military outposts inside Gaza, primarily located along the “yellow line” in eastern Khan Younis, according to satellite imagery reported by Drop Site News.

This comes as a former close aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Netanyahu asked him after Hamas’s October 7 attack to come up with a plan to avoid blame for Israel’s security failure. Netanyahu’s former spokesperson, Eli Feldstein, made the accusation in an interview as he faces trial for allegedly leaking classified information to the press. In the interview, Feldstein said that he was instructed by Netanyahu to silence calls for accountability. Meanwhile, Netanyahu appeared in court in Tel Aviv Tuesday. He’s facing charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Protesters gathered outside the courthouse.

Elana Barzilay: “We are here this morning, the same as every week since the beginning of the trials of Binyamin Netanyahu, protesting to make sure that these trials go as planned, that Mr. Netanyahu does not receive a pardon, does not escape responsibility for the crimes that he’s being judged and the crimes that he’s going to be judged for, which are the more serious ones. But he’s going to pay.”