Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reiterated that there will be no ceasefire in Gaza until the Hamas militant group releases all the hostages it took captive after launching the unprecedented attack October 7.
When asked about temporary ‘humanitarian’ pauses in the fighting as suggested by US President Joe Biden and top administration officials, the Prime Minister told ABC News Monday: “Well, there’ll be no ceasefire, general ceasefire, in Gaza without the release of our hostages. As far as tactical little pauses, an hour here, an hour there.
“We’ve had them before, I suppose, will check the circumstances in order to enable goods, humanitarian goods to come in, or our hostages, individual hostages to leave. But I don’t think there’s going to be a general ceasefire.”
According to the Israeli authorities, Hamas is holding 240 people as hostages in Gaza, including Israelis and foreign nationals.
Media reports have indicated that about 30 of them are children.
So far, the militant group released four civilian hostages, while a female Israeli soldier was rescued by the country’s forces.
Hamas has, however, claimed that 57 of the hostages were killed in the Israeli airstrikes.
Netanyahu went on to say that a ceasefire “will hamper the war effort”.
“It’ll hamper our effort to get our hostages out because the only thing that works on these criminals in Hamas is the military pressure that we’re exerting.”
When he was asked about a probable halt in the fighting if Hamas agreed to release the hostages, the Israeli leader told ABC News: “There will be a ceasefire for that purpose.”
When Netanyahu was asked who would govern the enclave once and when the raging fighting ends, he indicated that he believed Israel would have a role to play for an “indefinite period”.
“Those who don’t want to continue the way of Hamas… It certainly is not — I think Israel will, for an indefinite period will have the overall security responsibility because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it.
“When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine,” he told ABC News.
Netanyahu also addressed the role of Iran and Hezbollah in the conflict, cautioning them from getting more involved.
“I think they’ve understood that if they enter the war in a significant way, the response will be very, very powerful and I hope they don’t make that mistake.”
As of Tuesday morning, the war in Gaza has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians in the besieged enclave, including 4,008 children and 2,550 women.
In Israel, the death toll stood at 1,400,
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