Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel was fighting battles in seven sectors across the Middle East.
Speaking at meeting with the Gevura (“Heroism”) Forum, whose members have lost loved ones during the ongoing war against Hamas, Netanyahu said, “We are fighting on many fronts,” adding, “This situation requires internal cohesion, if not of the entire people, then of most of the people in order to fight.”
“Just to understand, we are—first of all—against Hamas [in Gaza], against Hezbollah [in Lebanon], against the Houthis [in Yemen], against the [Iranian-backed] militias in Iraq and Syria, against Iran [directly], [against Palestinian terrorists] in Judea and Samaria,” he said.
He noted that the Jewish state was also fighting a diplomatic battle against the International Criminal Court, whose chief prosecutor is seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
The Forum has urged Netanyahu to resist international pressure in pursuit of the goals of the war: eliminating Hamas, bringing the hostages home and ensuring Palestinian terrorists never again pose a threat from Gaza.
“We are committed to total victory,” said Netanyahu on Sunday. “We do not want to—and cannot—abandon [the fight in the Strip], not just because of the wonderful boys who have fallen, but because this is the future of the country; we have no choice,” he added.
“Our future will not exist here against the axis of evil of Iran and its proxies if we simply fold our hands,” he said. He emphasized that he was not prepared to accept Hamas’s demand that Israel halt the war without having achieved its war goals, lamenting that the idea has some support “in our areas.”
He reiterated that among those war goals was the safe return of all the hostages.
“We are also committed to returning the hostages, in various ways, which I will not detail,” he said.
On Saturday, Israeli forces rescued four hostages from two separate locations in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip.
During a complex daytime operation in the heart of a crowded residential neighborhood, the forces rescued Noa Argamani, 26; Almog Meir Jan, 21; Andrey Kozlov, 27; and Shlomi Ziv, 40.
Chief Inspector Arnon Zamora of the Border Police’s National Counter-Terrorism Unit was mortally wounded during the mission.
The four Israelis were all abducted by Hamas from the Supernova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im during the terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre.
Hamas has reportedly rejected the latest Israeli ceasefire proposal, claiming it differs in fundamental details from the one presented by U.S. President Joe Biden on May 31.
The terror group stated that the proposal “does not promise a permanent ceasefire, the occupation’s forces will remain in Gaza, and when they receive the hostages, they will renew the destruction against our nation.”
Hamas is demanding an end to the war and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Strip, two conditions Jerusalem rejects.
“Everything is designed in order to squeeze, to uproot and destroy us. To me this is completely clear,” said Netanyahu on Sunday. “Therefore, I do not think of abandoning this arena even for a moment, and I certainly do not think that we can give up on our necessary victory, against all of these butchers.”
