TEL AVIV (Dispatches) -- Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested the occupying regime of Israel could reoccupy the Gaza Strip.
Speaking to a group of foreign diplomats, he said the ongoing Zionist aggression in Gaza sought to “degrade Hamas’ capabilities, their terror capabilities, and degrade their will”.
But, he added, further escalation was possible.
“There are only two ways that you can deal with them,” Netanyahu told the ambassadors.
“You can either conquer them, and that’s always an open possibility, or you can deter them, and we are engaged right now in forceful deterrence. But I have to say we don’t rule out anything.”
The occupying regime of Israel and Egypt then imposed a blockade on Gaza after Hamas took power in 2007 after its parliamentary election victory. This crippling siege is ongoing.
The Zionist military began bombing the Gaza Strip on May 10, as tensions over raids on Al-Aqsa Mosque and threatened expulsions of Palestinians in Jerusalem Al-Quds’ Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood mounted.
The occupying regime of Israel has previously waged wars on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in 2008-9, 2012, and 2014.
The Zionist military said Wednesday its warplanes carried out 122 strikes on Gaza overnight, targeting residential buildings in total disregard for civilian lives.
Hidai Zilberman, the Israeli military spokesperson, said that around 10 p.m. on Tuesday night, 52 fighter jets carried out 122 airstrikes on the Gaza Strip in 25 minutes.
At least four Palestinians were martyred during the raids, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

One of the attacks killed a journalist named Yusef Abu Hussein and injured several others on Wednesday morning. Hussein, a presenter in a Palestinian Radio channel, lost his life during an air raid that targeted the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City.
The Zionist military’s airstrikes also hit homes and farmlands in the towns of Khan Younis and Jabalia on Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, while a house in Beit Lahia and a truck in the Maghazi camp were bombed by the regime’s jets.
According to the Israeli military, the resistance fighters also fired 50 rockets toward the occupied territories on Tuesday evening.
The Israeli military confirmed on Wednesday that it has tried to kill Hamas military chief Muhammad Deif twice since the confrontations began on May 10.
It said Deif escaped the attacks both times, claiming that it had targeted at least seven other top Hamas members, but all of whom survived, some with injuries.
Palestinian resistance groups continued firing rockets toward Israeli-occupied territories, with Hamas saying it targeted six Israeli air force bases in central and southern occupied territories in the course of its latest barrage.
“The bases that the Al-Qassam Brigades targeted are Hatzor, Hatzerim, Nevatim, Tel Nof, Palmachim, and Ramon,” Hamas said.
Rocket sirens sounded in central and southern occupied territories, including in Ashdod and Rehovot. Alarms also sounded in the western town of Sderot and Gaza border communities. After hours of silence, rocket sirens were set off in the Gaza border town of Ein HaShlosha in the morning, the Times of Israel reported.
Citing unnamed sources, Arabi 21 reported that settlers are leaving Tel Aviv en masse toward illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank over fears of the Palestinian resistance groups’ rockets.
Al-Mujahideen Brigades published a video of the areas targeted in Israeli-occupied territories, threatening the chief of the regime’s southern command that his house will be the next target.
“Your house is next,” the Palestinian resistance group said in the video, addressing Eliezer Toledano, according to Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen television network.
It came after a video of Toledano escaping a live TV interview right after hearing sirens circulated on social media.
Toledano was being interviewed on Sunday by Israeli Channel 13 before he heard the rocket sirens and escaped.