JERUSALEM, Israel — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday during a visit to Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops that half of Hamas’s terrorists had been killed or wounded, and that 18 of its 24 battalions had been destroyed thus far.
Netanyahu spoke at Latrun, a military site overlooking the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road where British-trained Jordanian troops had held out against Israel in the 1948 war. Israel captured it in 1967 after Jordan joined in that war by shelling western Jerusalem.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greets a female IDF soldier at Latrun, Israel, February 5, 2024 (Haim Zach GPO)
In a statement released by the Prime Minister’s Office, Netanyahu said (via Government Press Office translation):
Total victory is essential because it ensures the security of Israel. Total victory is the only way in which we can ensure additional historic peace agreements, which await. Total victory will strike a mortal blow against the axis of evil: Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis and – of course – Hamas.
Therefore, there is no substitute for total victory. One need only to think of what would happen without total victory: The displaced will not return, the next massacre will only be a matter of time and Iran, Hezbollah and others will simply celebrate here and destroy the Middle East; therefore, there is no substitute for total victory.
After having met you and your commanders in the field in the Gaza Strip several times, I would like to tell you – I am impressed by your heroism, intensity and determination, and by our ability to achieve this victory, which is coming. By our calculation, as of today we have already destroyed – meaning, we have either killed or wounded – over half of their force. We have destroyed 18 of their 24 battalions. We are engaged in active demilitarization by conducting raids against the remaining terrorists and we are destroying the underground networks. We are on the way to total victory and I want to tell you that we are committed to it and will not give up on it. We will not stop the war without achieving this goal of total victory, which will restore security to both the south and the north.
The prime minister’s insistence that the goal remained “total victory” was a statement made as much for an American audience as for the Israeli soldiers around him, as reported emerge that the U.S. wants Israel to accept a ceasefire without destroying Hamas.
As Caroline Glick of the Jewish News Syndicate has noted, CIA director William Burns is trying to negotiate a deal through Egypt and Qatar, for Hamas to release the remaining 130 or so Israeli hostages, in return for which Israel would release possibly thousands of Palestinian terrorists, and stop fighting in Gaza for one-to-two months — a pause the U.S. reportedly hopes will make it harder for Israel to resume fighting. The Biden administration also wants a Palestinian state to emerge from the war.
If the White House succeeds, Israel will fail to destroy Hamas’s military capabilities and to remove it as a governing presence in Gaza. The deal has been stalled by Hamas infighting, but U.S. pressure on Israel is growing.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has become increasingly hostile in his public remarks about Israel, is due to visit Israel this week, and will likely press Israel to pull back its military operations in Gaza, despite evidence that Hamas tries to reemerge where the IDF leaves.
On Friday, U.S. Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) told Fox News Sunday that Israel had “only” managed to “knock out about a third of Hamas fighters,” a figure apparently based on U.S. intelligence estimates, as published by the Wall Street Journal. If the Biden administration can claim that Israel is not making progress against Hamas, the thinking appears to be, it can assert its own vision for an end to the conflict.
But Israel’s leaders have other ideas.
Defense minister Yoav Gallant said “the terror group’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar was on the run, out of touch with his fighters, and forced to flee from one hideout to another with the IDF hot on his heels,” according to the Times of Israel. He reiterated — as he has said from the start — that the war will require a long effort.
Breitbart News asked Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy on Monday about a looming Israeli attack on Hamas positions in the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah, on the Egyptian border, which Israel likely must control to prevent Hamas from escaping.
Egypt has warned Israel not to mount an offensive in Rafah, fearing that an attack would cause a flood of Palestinian refugees into Gaza. The Biden administration does not appear to be using its leverage with the Egyptian regime to convince it to relent.
Levy said that “our forces will, of course, turn their attention towards the remainder, including the south of Gaza. We think it’s very important for the whole security arhitecture of the region that Hamas be totally destroyed inside the Gaza Strip, and that Gaza remain permanently demilitarized in order to prevent any resurgence of the terror threat, which would only undermine regional stability and security.”
He said the survival of Hamas was “not in the interest of any of our neighbors,” including Egypt.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
