Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday said his country will forge ahead on its plan to take over all of Gaza, despite widespread opposition — but added that he doesn’t “want to keep it” and pledged to “hand it over to Arab forces.”

“We intend to [take over all of Gaza] assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza and to pass it to civilian governance that is not Hamas and not anyone advocating the destruction of Israel,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Fox News.

The latter distinction would likely mean a country subscribing to Trump’s 2020 Abraham Accords — which formalized diplomatic relations between Israel and Islamic nations like the United Arab Emirates, Bairahin, Morocco and Sudan — would be selected by the Jewish state.

President Trump has not explicitly given Israel the go-ahead to take over the war-torn enclave, Netanyahu said — but the country doesn’t need the US’s permission to do so.

“He understands it’s Israel who’s doing the fighting — it’s not American soldiers,” he said. “He just says, ‘I know Israel will do what it has to do.’”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) currently control about 75% of the Gaza Strip, with the central coast city Deir El-Balah remaining the last hold-out that hasn’t seen extensive military operations since the war began in October 2023.

About 2 million Gazans are huddled there and in other pockets along the Mediterranean coast, with most intelligence indicating the 20 hostages who remain alive are likely held in Deir El-Balah.

Word of Netanyahu’s plan first broke Monday, just days after Hamas released twisted footage of two severly emaciated hostages, Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski. 

A skeletal David was filmed digging what Hamas said was his own grave in a dark tunnel, while Braslavski writhed in agony while begging for food and water.

Experts have speculated Hamas might have released the images to spark another round of cease-fire talks. The haunting images may have instead convinced Israeli leadership that an all-out occupation was the only way to end the war.

“It showed off the brutality of Hamas to the world and gave Netanyahu the justification he needed to launch a full occupation of Gaza,” former senior FBI counterterrorism official Christopher O’Leary previously told The Post.

Israel has been wary throughout the war of IDF incursions into unoccupied territory for fear of endangering surviving hostages, especially after Hamas began issuing orders to execute any prisoners if IDF troops drew too near.

But Netanyahu has apparently come to believe Hamas has no intention of freeing any of the remaining hostages, senior Israeli officials have said, and that taking them back by force is Israel’s only remaining option.

Not everybody is convinced a full occupation will be as decisive as Netanyahu hopes, with some experts cautioning the IDF doesn’t have the resources to effectively hold the entire Gaza Strip.

“We’ve already seen soldiers suffer from fatigue, death, PTSD, and suicide through the course of the war,” said Mona Yacoubian, director and senior adviser of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Israel also has to contend with its other conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, against the Houthis in Yemen and, of course, Iran,” she added.

Yacoubian and others also think a full occupation was rife with risk for spawning new radical insurgents to replace an eradicated Hamas.

“If occupation becomes the norm, in a place with widespread destruction and hunger, we’ll see insurgents rise up and strike back,” O’Leary said, referring to the scenes and fears of civilian starvation that have been emerging from Gaza.

“This could birth groups more radical than Hamas,” Yacoubian added. 

“This is a recipe for Israel to become embroiled in a forever war in Gaza.”