In a televised address to the nation on Saturday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on he had instructed the military to intensify pressure on Hamas after the Palestinian jihadists earlier in the week rejected an Israeli proposal for another temporary truce, instead demanding a deal to end the war.
Netanyahu said that while war came with a heavy price, Israel had “no choice but to continue fighting for our very existence, until victory.”
Targeting his critics among the Israeli opposition, he said that the proposals bandied about on “tricking” Hamas into ending the war in return for the hostages and then resume military operations were detached from reality: Hamas is demanding “binding” international commitments as part of an end to hostilities. Those who were suggesting this “illusion of deception,” while speaking publicly on Israeli TV, had no idea how international politics works, Netanyahu said.
“If we surrender to Hamas’s demands now, all the tremendous achievements gained by our soldiers, our fallen, and our wounded heroes—those achievements will simply be lost,” he said.