Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that those who are calling for an immediate end to the war in Gaza without defeating Hamas are encouraging terror and preventing the release of the hostages.
In a statement delivered at the start of a meeting of his governing coalition, Netanyahu said (translated from Hebrew by the Government Press Office):
In the last 24 hours, the Navy attacked power stations in Yemen, and IDF soldiers attacked Zeitoun and eliminated dozens of terrorists in the Gaza Strip. The Air Force attacked senior Hezbollah terrorists and launchers in Lebanon. I would like to emphasize: Our activity in Lebanon is in accordance with the ceasefire agreement. According to this agreement, we are enforcing, with live fire, any violation and any attempt to rearm, by Hezbollah.
Our ongoing security control in the Strip is only one of our conditions for concluding the war, conditions that Hamas is refusing to accept. We insist that not only must Hamas be disarmed, but also that Israel will enforce the demilitarization of the Strip over time by continuous action against any attempt at rearmament and reorganization by any terrorist element whatsoever.
Hamas is demanding the complete opposite. It wants us to completely leave the entire Strip, from north to south, including the Philadelphi Corridor that prevents smuggling and the security perimeter that protects our communities. This way it would be able to reorganize, rearm and attack us again. Hamas would again be able to come in its pickup trucks and with its monstrous murderers up to the fence and threaten Nir Oz, Kisufim and Sderot all over again.
Those who are calling for an end to the war today without defeating Hamas, are not only hardening Hamas’s stance and pushing off the release of our hostages, they are also ensuring that the horrors of the October 7 will recur again and again, and that our sons and daughters will need to fight again and again in an endless war. Therefore, both to advance the release of our hostages and to ensure that Gaza will never again constitute a threat to Israel, we must complete the work and defeat Hamas.
This is exactly the decision that the Security Cabinet made last week. We are determined to implement it, and I stand by the IDF, the security forces and the citizens of Israel.
Together we have had great achievements against our enemies on all fronts. Together we will fight and with G-d’s help, together we will complete the victory and end the war.
Netanyahu spoke as the country experienced national demonstrations and a general strike in support of a (theoretical) hostage deal. There are 50 Israeli hostages still in Gaza, 20 of whom are thought to still be alive after nearly two years.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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