The Israeli Security Cabinet on Sunday evening will discuss the next steps toward the defeat of the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video statement.
“I am assembling the Cabinet today to discuss the next stage of the IDF chief of staff’s proposal,” the premier said. “I cannot detail it here, but we are focusing on two things. First, to return our hostages, and second, to defeat Hamas. There are different tactics for this.
“I obviously cannot detail it here, but I can tell you that these are our goals,” he said in the video, which ran for more than seven minutes.
The Security Cabinet is set to meet at 7 p.m.
“The thing that concerns me greatly is that I hear people say, ‘This whole war is political.’ What? To leave Hamas inside [Gaza], so that it will be on the borders again?” exclaimed Netanyahu, asking, “Is this political?”
Referring to calls to refuse military service in protest of the resumption of war against Hamas, the prime minister said that “calls for refusals motivated our enemies” before the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Those who care about the state, care about its existence, do not call for refusal,” he said. “We must understand that we are in a war. We have not finished the war; we will finish it. We will achieve full victory.
Netanyahu denounced accusations that he does not care about the fate of the remaining 59 hostages in Gaza as “the propaganda line of the panic channels and the leftists.
“On the first day of the war, someone very, very senior, whom the left knows and appreciates very well, said that we will not free even one [hostage],” he explained. I said, ‘No, we will release them, and we will free them through a combination of military and political pressure.’
“With God’s help, we have so far brought out 147 living [captives],” the prime minister said. “Military pressure works—and this is what will work now as well.”
Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, who has led the indirect talks for a hostage deal with Hamas in recent weeks, told the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem on April 28 that Jerusalem will finish the war against the terrorist group and return the remaining hostages.
“There are people you’ll meet in Israel who say, you know, forget about the hostages, just finish the war. And the people who say, finish, you know, forget about the war, just return the hostages,” Dermer told JNS CEO and Israel Bureau Chief Alex Traiman during an interview.
“We’re not going to do that. That’s not where Prime Minister Netanyahu is. It’s not where I am,” declared the senior Cabinet member.
Twelve months from now, the Jewish state’s seven-front war across the Middle East will be “over,” Dermer predicted, adding, “Israel will have won.”
Jerusalem’s three goals for the war in Gaza are to eradicate Hamas as a military and political body, bring all of the hostages home, and prevent the enclave from re-emerging as a security threat to Israel in the future.
Speaking at the International Bible Contest in Jerusalem on Thursday, Independence Day, Netanyahu reiterated that there are “up to 24 living” captives left. “We want to bring back the living and the deceased as well.
“It’s a very important goal,” the prime minister continued, while adding, “In the war, there is the ultimate goal, and that ultimate goal is the victory over our enemies, and that we will achieve.”