Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his government hadn’t budged from its determination to achieve total victory over Hamas and promised major security changes in the north during a press conference in Tel Aviv on Saturday.
Speaking in the context of the yet-to-be-confirmed IDF killing of Hamas arch-murderer Mohammed Deif, second in command in Gaza after Yahya Sinwar, Netanyahu said, “Victory is not an empty word.”
“Victory will be achieved when we eliminate the military and governing capabilities of Hamas, bring all of our hostages back home, ensure that Gaza will never again constitute a threat to Israel, and return our residents in the south and the north securely to their homes,” he said.
The prime minister painted a picture of approaching victory in Gaza after more than nine months of fighting.
“In recent weeks, we have identified clear cracks in Hamas under the power of the blows we are raining on them,” Netanyahu said. “We see changes. We see weakness.”
He said Hamas’s commanders are cut off from their forces and the Gazan population has begun to internalize the “the magnitude of the disaster that Hamas has inflicted on it.
“Our forces are advancing determinedly all across Gaza—in Rafah, Khan Younis, Shejaiya [in Gaza City] and the Philadelphi Corridor [on the Sinai border]. We are reaching every place from which terrorists set out on October 7. We will reach them. We are fighting and we will win.”
Netanyahu warned of the existential threat posed by Iran. Not only does Iran pose a nuclear threat, but it also threatens to strangle Israel in a “chokehold of terrorism and missile fire” via its proxies to the north and south—Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, militias in Syria and Iraq, and elsewhere, he said.
The Lebanese front
The prime minister referred to major changes ahead on the northern front, suggesting that a major operation may be in the works to drive back Hezbollah, which has fired rockets and anti-tank missiles at Israel on a near-daily basis since the start of the Gaza war.
Some 60,000 northern residents have been uprooted from their homes and are living in hotels and other temporary housing to escape the Hezbollah attacks.
“We are not prepared to accept the situation that has been created in the north. We will work to return you to your homes with full security one way or another. We are committed and determined to change the security reality in the north not just for a few days or months—but for generations, and this is what we will do,” he said.
Regarding the hostages, of whom 120, both living and dead, are estimated to be held by Hamas, Netanyahu stressed that he remains firmly committed to the proposed deal approved by President Joe Biden.
Netanyahu reiterated four basic conditions within that outline: 1) Israel continues the war until all of its objectives are met; 2) Israel controls the Philadelphi Corridor to stop weapons smuggling from Egypt; 3) Israel prevents the return of armed terrorists and war materiel to the northern Gaza Strip, and; 4) As many living hostages as possible are freed in the first stage of the plan.
He said that while he hadn’t budged “a millimeter” from the deal’s outline, Hamas has attempted to introduce 29 changes. “I told both the negotiating team and the Americans: Not even one change,” Netanyahu said.
He appealed to the families of the hostages to adhere to the principles above and said that if they do, “we will achieve an agreement that will both free the hostages—the living and the deceased—and allow us to continue the war until victory.”
