The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected this Sunday possible progress in negotiations for a truce in the war in the Middle East, ensuring that “Israel cannot accept the demands that Hamas has put forward.” His statements took place amid pressure from the United States, Egypt and several European countries to stop attacks on the territory of Gaza, where civilian victims number in the tens of thousands.
“Capitulating to what Hamas is asking would be a terrible defeat for the State of Israel”, said the Israeli president, after a ministerial meeting, as detailed by his office to the press. He also noted: “Israel has shown its will, but Hamas remains entrenched in extreme positions, especially because it demands an end to the presence of all our forces in the Gaza Strip, an end to the war and the Hamas leaders in power.
“Israel has been, and continues to be, willing to pause the fighting, so that our hostages can be released, that is what we did when we managed to free 124 hostages, and only then did we resume the fighting,” Netanyahu said, but emphatically confirmed that he will not accept a post-war scenario in which Hamas remains in power in Gazamuch less while it still holds dozens of Jewish hostages in that territory, remnants of the citizens they captured after the massacres in southern Israel on October 7 of last year.
“Israel cannot accept that,” explained the Israeli Prime Minister, in relation to the claims that Hamas representatives brought to Egypt this week. Netanyahu noted that “accepting what they ask would allow the terrorists to continue their massacres, rapes and kidnappings again and again.”
For his part, the top political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniye, reiterated that the group is interested in reach a ceasefire to end Israeli “aggression” and guarantee the withdrawal of its troops from Gaza along with an exchange of hostagesaccording to the Qatari network Al Jazeera.
In parallel, Haniye blamed Netanyahu for “maintaining aggression and the expansion of the circle of conflict and for sabotaging the efforts made through mediators and various parties” to reach a truce.
Meanwhile, the pro-Iran Lebanese movement Hezbollah announced this Sunday that it fired dozens of rockets at Kiryat Shmona, northern Israel in retaliation for an attack that took place in southern Lebanon and which, according to a local official, caused the death of a couple and their child.
