Wounded Palestinian children seek care at al-Shifa Hospital after an Israeli shelling of Gaza on October 24, 2023. (Photo by AP)
Washington, October 29 (RHC)-- A far-right U.S. Republican congressman of Israeli descent has called on the Tel Aviv regime to press ahead with its brutal aggression and occupy the Gaza Strip amid Washington’s unswerving support for the illegal entity to invade the besieged area.
Max Miller, representative of Ohio and an aide to former hawkish president Donald Trump, was quoted by the Hebrew-language Haaretz newspaper as saying on Saturday that Israel needed to “take back” the Gaza Strip to “get a lot bigger” as part of its decades-long occupation plan for the Palestinian territories.
"Israel will get a lot bigger. Not a lot smaller. And we will take back that land," Miller told the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual gathering in Las Vegas.
Miller has taken enormous flak in recent days for saying that Gaza will be turned into a “parking lot" after Israel's ground invasion of the coastal silver. The U.S. Republican also claimed that Israel should not be beholden to rules of engagement in its days-long war on the besieged strip.
Israel has been waging a ferocious war against Gaza since October 7, when Hamas and its fellow Gaza-based resistance movement of the Islamic Jihad launched their biggest operation against Israel in years. The surprise Palestinian offensive, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, came in response to the regime’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people.
The Israeli war has so far killed over 8,000 Palestinians, including more than 3,000 children, with more than 20,500 wounded.
The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution on Friday, calling for the implementation of an immediate "humanitarian truce" in Gaza.
The vote at the General Assembly came after the United Nations Security Council failed four times in the past two weeks to take action due to the US's recurrently casting its veto against relevant resolutions.
The assembly stressed the "importance of preventing further destabilization and escalation of violence in the region," calling on "all parties to exercise maximum restraint and upon all those with influence on them to work toward this objective."
Israel has rejected all calls for a ceasefire, claiming it would benefit Hamas.