TEL AVIV. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel plans to take military control of the entire Gaza Strip and later hand it over to Arab forces who will properly administer the territory.

But he also said that Israel does not want to keep the Gaza Strip, according to Reuters, Netanyahu told Fox News.

"We plan to do it," Netanyahu said when asked if Israel planned to take control of the entire Gaza Strip.

"We don't want to keep it. We want a security perimeter. We don't want to rule there. We want a ruling body there," the Israeli prime minister added.

The Israeli security cabinet is set to meet on Thursday afternoon to discuss the next steps in the war. It is expected to discuss the possible expansion of the offensive and the occupation of the entire Gaza Strip.

The Gaza Strip War began on October 7, 2023, when Israel launched a military offensive in response to a terrorist attack by the Palestinian movement Hamas and its allies, in which militants in southern Israel killed approximately 1,200 people and took another 251 hostage.

In late November 2023 and in January and February this year, two ceasefires saw a large number of hostages released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. There are now about 50 hostages in the zone, of whom only about 20 are alive.

Since the start of the war, at least 61,158 Palestinians have been killed and 151,442 wounded in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported. The UN considers these figures reliable, according to AFP.