Amid reports that Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu has shifted toward prioritizing freeing the hostages and ending the war in Gaza through a deal over fighting until Hamas gives in or is defeated, he stresses that both war aims are still possible, APA reports citing Times of Israel.
“I am telling you – there will be no Hamas,” Netanyahu says during a visit to the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company headquarters in Ashkelon. “There will be no Hamastan. We are not going back to that. It is over. We will release all our hostages.”
He says any suggestions that these are two opposing goals are “nonsense.”
“It works together. We will complete this together, contrary to what they say. We will eliminate them to the end.”
According to Channel 13, Netanyahu said in a meeting on the Gaza war on Monday that Hamas would remain in Gaza “over my dead body.”
“That won’t happen. We need to kill everyone holding a weapon. Nothing less. Will the great Israel fall to them? Will Hamas defeat the great IDF?”
Turning to IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, Netanyahu told him the military was poor at making “political assessments” and reiterated: “Hamas will surrender. I’m putting my cultural and political assessment on the line. You, the IDF, are not good at political assessments. We can’t win? Of course we can.”
Netanyahu is expected to fly to Washington next week to meet US President Donald Trump, who has said he would push Israel to end the war in Gaza.
In Ashkelon, the premier says that there are “huge” opportunities now. “We are not going to miss them.”
He also teases an energy network running through Israel, saying that there is “a huge opportunity here, both to defeat our enemies and to secure our future – economically, nationally, internationally and energetically.”
“We will connect Asia and the entire Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula, with its vast energy resources, to the West,” he continues. “And this is about to happen.”
Netanyahu adds that Israel is expected to see a revenue of NIS 300 billion over the next decade from natural gas.
