Israel will resume the war against Hamas following “this stage of the return of our hostages” taken during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack despite international pressure to convert a truce for the release of hostages into a full-scale ceasefire.
“In the past week, we have had a very great achievement: the return of dozens of our hostages,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday. “But in recent days, I have heard a question: After completing this stage of the return of our hostages, will Israel go back to the fighting? My answer is an unequivocal yes.”
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Netanyahu’s statement amounted to a blanket rebuff of international calls for a permanent halt to the fighting, although it did not preclude an extension of the truce for continued releases of the sort that Secretary of State Antony Blinken has endorsed. Hamas has agreed to an incremental release of civilian hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, but the terrorist group has stipulated that none of the captured members of Israel Defense Forces will be released unless Israel abandons the military campaign.
“It is still early and difficult to speak about the release of [captured] troops under conditions of the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian people and the continuing Israeli aggression,” senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told Al-Arabiya, according to an Iranian media translation of the remarks. "The termination of war is the condition for the negotiations.”
Blinken will return to Israel this week for further discussions of how to navigate that moment, both concerning the hostages and Israel’s still-unclear plan for how to achieve its military objectives.
“Looking at the next couple of days, we’ll be focused on doing what we can to extend the pause so that we continue to get more hostages out and more humanitarian assistance in,” Blinken told reporters on the sidelines of a NATO ministerial in Brussels. “We’ll discuss with Israel how it can achieve its objective of ensuring that the terrorist attacks of Oct. 7 never happen again while sustaining and increasing humanitarian assistance and minimizing further suffering and casualties among Palestinian civilians.”
Hamas seized about 240 hostages during the Oct. 7 rampage across southern Israel that ignited the war. After weeks of fighting and back-channel negotiations, the two sides agreed to a four-day truce to allow the provision of humanitarian aid and the exchange for some of the hostages. That truce was scheduled to end on Monday, but Israel has agreed to extend the truce by one day for every 10 hostages released. Hamas has released 61 civilian Israelis and 20 foreign hostages, according to the Times of Israel.
“We are in a complex moment, with a time window within the framework of the deal to return our kidnapped. We will work to make the most of it as much as possible,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told local press on Wednesday. “At the same time, we are prepared and ready to return to fighting at any given moment, including this moment.”
Those statements coincided with China’s convening of a U.N. Security Council meeting on the war that showcased the divide between Israel and other states outside the U.S. alliance network. China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, chaired the meeting and suggested that the war will “devour the whole region” if Israel returns to the offensive.
“There is no safe area under gunfire, and letting the fighting drag on would only bring more deaths and damage,” Wang said through a United Nations interpreter. “There is no firewall in Gaza either. And resumed fighting would only most likely turn into a calamity that devours the whole region.”
Israel’s envoy to the United Nations rejected that line of argument, citing Hamas’s stated determination to repeat the atrocities of Oct. 7 until the state of Israel is destroyed.
“Anyone who supports a ceasefire basically supports Hamas’s continued reign of terror in Gaza,” Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan told the council meeting. “Hamas is a genocidal terror organization — they don't hide it — not a reliable partner for peace. Don't you see the contradiction here? Calling for both a ceasefire and peace is a paradox … and nothing can change a genocidal ideology. It must be uprooted and eradicated.”
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Netanyahu, who met with leaders of the southern Israeli communities that bore the brunt of the Hamas massacres on Oct. 7, was heard underscoring that he will not allow terror chief Yahya Sinwar to win another propaganda victory over Israel.
“The price of agreeing to end the fighting is that you leave Hamas there, that Sinwar emerges from the rubble and flashes a ‘V’ sign,” Netanyahu said Wednesday, per a recording obtained by the Times of Israel. “I won’t agree to that.”