Updated 02.59 | Published 01.37
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that a cease-fire in Gaza cannot be considered until terrorist-labeled Hamas releases the hostages.
– There will be no ceasefire, general ceasefire, in Gaza without the release of our hostages, Netanyahu said in an interview with American ABC News.
He adds that Israel, as in the past, can allow small tactical breaks, “an hour here and an hour there”, for humanitarian purposes or to get individual hostages out.
But he does not believe in any general ceasefire, he emphasizes.
– It will hamper our efforts to get our hostages out because the only thing that works on these criminals in Hamas is the military pressure that we apply.
Israel will assume overall security responsibility in Gaza for an “indefinite period,” Netanyahu says.
– When we do not have security responsibility, we have outbreaks of Hamas terror on a scale that we could not imagine.
The war began after the terrorist group Hamas’s brutal surprise attack on Israel on October 7. Palestinian militiamen then killed 1,400 people, the vast majority of them civilians, and took roughly 240 people hostage.
According to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, more than 10,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war.