Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said Tuesday that if Hamas did not release all 73 of the remaining hostages still in Gaza by noon on Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would resume attacking “until the final defeat of Hamas.”
Netanyahu issued his ultimatum a day after President Donald Trump said that Hamas had until noon on Saturday to release all of the hostages or else he would “let hell break out” and allow Israel to do whatever it wanted to do.
Trump, in turn, was responding to Hamas’s announcement that it was pausing the release of hostages, after the latest hostages to be released shocked the world with their emaciated appearance, drawing global criticism of the group.
Netanyahu, having just returned from a week-long visit to the U.S., issued a statement (translated from Hebrew by the Government Press Office):
I have just finished an in-depth, four-hour Security Cabinet meeting. We all expressed outrage over the shocking state of our three hostages who were released last Saturday.
We all welcomed President Trump’s demand to release our hostages by Saturday noon as well, and we all welcomed the President’s revolutionary vision for the future of Gaza.
In light of Hamas’s announcement regarding its decision to violate the agreement and not release our hostages, last night I instructed the IDF to amass forces inside – and surrounding – the Gaza Strip. This action is being carried out at this hour and will be completed very soon.
The unanimous decision that I passed in the Cabinet is as follows:
If Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday noon, the ceasefire will end, and the IDF will resume intense fighting until the final defeat of Hamas.
Netanyahu did not say how he planned to protect the hostages in the event of renewed war.
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 Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
