NETANYAHU / KATZ
"Israel's policy in Gaza is clear and has not changed: There will be no rebuilding before the disarmament of the Hamas terrorist organization and the complete demilitarization of the Gaza Strip."
"distorts the facts and recycles old information" — — the PMO, on the report that it had already approved the work
Two ministers put their names to a categorical written statement on August 27. Eighteen days earlier Army Radio reported they had quietly signed off on infrastructure work in "Green Rafah" — earthmoving, electricity, water, sewer, contractors on site — in an IDF-held, fully cleared area, at the same meeting that approved the multinational force. The PMO said the report distorted the facts and called it an old Emirati pilot. Both can hold only if "rebuilding" excludes power and sewer at a cleared site, and no one made either office define the word. The detail that says the most ran in one Israeli outlet and nowhere else: the mobile homes, the part you could see from a road, are not authorized until November — after the October 27 vote. Approved unannounced, denied as old news, declared prohibited eighteen days later, visible only after the election. Whether that is reconstruction is arguable. The sequence is not.