Just before convening his Security Cabinet to vote on a full IDF takeover of the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel “intends to” take over the enclave but “doesn’t want to keep” the territory or “be there as a governing body.”

Speaking to Fox News’ Bill Hemmer from his office in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said, “We don’t want to keep [Gaza]. We want to have a security perimeter. We don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body. We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us and giving Gazans a good life.”

Asked if President Donald Trump had given him a “green light” for the plan, Netanyahu said Trump “understands that it’s Israel who’s going to do the fighting” but that the two “haven’t gone into that kind of discussion.” Netanyahu added that the two leaders had agreed to a “humanitarian surge” to take place before what Netanyahu called “our final military action.”

Netanyahu said he and Trump also agreed on “certain principles” for a day-after plan for Gaza, including the demilitarization of both Hamas and Gaza, the release of the remaining hostages, Israel maintaining responsibility for security in and around the Strip and for Gaza to be “governed by a civilian authority that is not Israel.”

“I don’t want to occupy Gaza forever,” Netanyahu said.

In the Fox interview, Netanyahu also railed against the recent New York Times above-the-fold front page photograph of a Gazan child, presented as an example of suffering from severe malnutrition, when he had a genetic disorder. Netanyahu said he was looking into “whether a country can sue The New York Times.” 

Asked if he would allow more independent reporters to go into Gaza in order to report more accurately, Netanyahu said, “That’s my conclusion. In fact, that’s my instruction as of this morning to the military … Those who are lying are going to continue lying, but give honest journalists the ability to see the truth.”