Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday night that the Gaza Strip no longer poses a military threat to the Jewish state, while acknowledging that Hamas’s civilian rule has yet to be dismantled.
“We had several objectives in Gaza,” Netanyahu told Channel 14 host Yinon Magal in a rare interview with a Hebrew-language broadcaster, referring to Israel’s declared war goals.
“The first objective was, of course, to bring back all of our hostages. We achieved it,” Netanyahu said, adding that “nobody” but him had believed Israel would succeed in returning all 251 hostages taken to Gaza during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.
The second objective was to ensure the Hamas-run coastal enclave no longer posed a military threat to Israel. “At the moment, it is no longer one,” Netanyahu told Magal.
“Do you want proof? A few days ago, we eliminated one of the last remaining [senior Hamas leaders], Izz al-Din al-Haddad, who was their military commander and one of the architects of the terrible massacre,” he said. “What was the response? Nothing. Zero. Not a single bullet, because we are in control.”
However, the premier noted, “We also had a third objective, and that objective has not yet been achieved: to eliminate their civilian rule.” He added, “We will get there. There is still work to do.”
Under the second phase of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan, Hamas is to cede power and Gaza is to be deradicalized and disarmed, with the deployment of an International Stabilization Force to parts of the Strip currently held by the Israeli military.
Top Hamas leaders, including Khaled Mashaal and Musa Abu Marzouk, have rejected key parts of Trump’s plan in recent months, including disarmament, despite having agreed to the proposal in October.
Netanyahu in the interview on Tuesday cited the eliminations of Hamas leaders Mohammed Deif, Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, along with Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and the Lebanese terror group’s senior leadership, the destruction of much of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal, Israeli control of nearly 70% of Gaza, the establishment of security zones in Lebanon and Syria, and two military strikes on Iran as achievements that he said had removed a direct existential threat to the Jewish state.
The Israel Defense Forces will continue to settle the score with every terrorist who took part in the Oct. 7 attacks and “everyone who planned it,” he vowed.
Netanyahu declined to elaborate on plans to facilitate the voluntary emigration of Gazans or on proposals to establish Jewish communities in the enclave, saying he “prefers to talk less and do more.”
Asked when the War of Redemption would end, the prime minister said Israel still had “work to do—to deal with the remnants of the Iranian axis and seize opportunities for peace agreements.”
“Let me tell you something. It never ends. If you want to live in the Middle East and in this world, you have to be very strong. We are very strong. Israel is stronger than ever, and we have pushed back those threats,” he added.
Some 6,000 terrorists from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Fatah, as well as unaffiliated Gazan “civilians,” infiltrated Israel’s southern border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people, wounding thousands and kidnapping 251.
IDF ground forces entered Gaza on Oct. 27, following a weeks-long air campaign in response to the Oct. 7 massacre.
The war quickly expanded beyond Gaza, with Jerusalem also fighting Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, battling terrorist groups in Judea and Samaria, conducting military operations in Syria, confronting Houthi attacks from Yemen, carrying out strikes inside Iranian territory and responding to attacks from Iraq.
