Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday his country does not seek to conquer, occupy or govern Gaza after its war against Hamas but a "credible force" would be needed to enter the Palestinian enclave if necessary to prevent the emergence of militant threats.
Netanyahu's comments this week suggesting that Israel would be responsible for Gaza security indefinitely drew pushback from the United States, Israel's main ally.
Washington has said it would oppose Israeli post-war occupation of Gaza, where Israel has waged a bombing campaign to destroy the enclave's Hamas rulers after militants rampaged through southern Israeli communities on October 7 in an attack that Israel says killed 1,400 people.
Meanwhile, Israel began daily four-hour pauses in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday to enable Palestinians to flee hostilities in the coastal enclave.
15 Palestinians killed
Fifteen Palestinians were killed and at least 20 others were injured by Israeli forces in a raid on Jenin city and refugee camp and in other Palestinian towns in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said on Thursday.
Israel's military said it was conducting counter-terrorism raids in Jenin, but gave no further details.
At least 178 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the deadly October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures.
Four-hour pauses
Palestinians trudging past Israeli tanks and decomposing corpses along a frontline passage out of encircled Gaza City on Thursday said they feared a new "Nakba", the "catastrophe" of their mass dispossession after Israel was founded in 1948.
Thousands of people were moving south along Salah al-Din road out of Gaza City on Thursday, the only exit route for civilians escaping an intensifying siege as Israeli tanks rolled deeper into the Gaza Strip enclave.
White House spokesman John Kirby announced the pauses and the opening of two humanitarian corridors in northern Gaza to allow Palestinians to seek safety from Israel's military operations.
The pauses emerged from discussions between U.S and Israeli officials in recent days, including talks Biden had with Netanyahu, Kirby said.
The pauses would allow people to get out of harm's way and for deliveries of humanitarian aid and could be used as a way to get hostages out of Gaza.
According to Israel, Palestinian Hamas gunmen killed 1,400 people and took 240 hostages during an October 7 incursion into Israel. Israel has responded with an air bombardment and ground invasion seeking to oust the Islamist group from Gaza.
Palestinian officials said 10,812 Gaza residents had been killed as of Thursday.
