‘A step away from victory’? Netanyahu says his April claim was not intended literally

At a Wednesday press conference to the foreign press, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid out his positions on the state of the war in Gaza, and particularly his new focus on the Strip’s border with Egypt, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and his refusal to remove Israeli troops from there for a potential ceasefire-and-hostage release deal.

Netanyahu was asked to explain his April claim that Israel was a mere “step away from victory” against Hamas. Five months later, the country does not seem to have achieved that elusive goal, and National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi has said the war is expected to continue into 2025.

“What I meant to say [then] was that we were a step away from the critical thing that will pave our way to victory,” Netanyahu told reporters during the English-language press conference, referring to the Rafah offensive that Israel launched in early May.

“I didn’t think that we could have this victory if we didn’t go into Rafah, and I withstood quite a bit of international pressure and American pressure [in order] to go into Rafah and to Philadelphi,” he said.

“Now, we’re in a position to destroy Hamas militarily. There’s still work to be done to destroy its governance capability,” he continued. “I don’t want to administer Gaza, but I want to take this away from Hamas.”

The premier reiterated his demand to maintain an IDF presence on the Gaza-Egypt border during the first phase of a potential ceasefire deal, albeit a reduced one.

If Israel leaves the corridor, it won’t be able to come back, he said. “We’re not going to leave for 42 days [of the first phase of any hostage deal]. We’re there.” Regarding critics of his position, he stated, “They say, If you stay, this will kill the deal. And I say, such a deal will kill us.”

If Israel were to leave the Gaza-Egypt border, he said, “We can get a few [hostages] out — they’ll give us that. But they’ll leave a lot with them.” And Israel would then have lost the “pressure point” it holds over Hamas.

The briefing struck many of the same notes as his Hebrew press event earlier in the week, and, as he did then, Netanyahu used a map to demonstrate to reporters what he asserted was the imperative of keeping IDF troops stationed along the border.

Since taking the border region in May, Israeli forces have discovered numerous smuggling tunnels underneath that it says Hamas used to massively arm itself in recent years. The Philadelphi Corridor has become a sticking point in hostage negotiations, as Netanyahu has said Israel will not withdraw and Hamas has said it will not accept anything less than the full withdrawal of Israeli troops.

Highlighing the short distance between the Palestinian enclave and Israeli border communities, as well as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Beersheba, Netanyahu argued that the Philadelphi Corridor was crucial to Hamas’s ability to arm itself and said that its ability to do so had enabled the October 7 massacre.

Netanyahu said oversight of the border was necessary not only to keep Hamas from terrorizing Israel but also to keep it from “terrorizing the people of Gaza.”

“Gaza cannot have a future if Gaza remains porous and you can enable the rearmament of Gaza through the Philadelphi Corridor,” he said.

Netanyahu is widely reported to be at odds with much of the defense establishment, with top officials, including the defense minister and chief of staff, arguing that Israel can pull out and later retake Philadelphi and that ruling out even a temporary Israeli withdrawal was dooming any chance of bringing hostages back alive.

Opposition critics of the premier have claimed Philadelphi had not been a key concern of his until recently and have accused him of seizing on the issue as an excuse to avoid a deal.

Netanyahu argued that, in fact, “if you want to release the hostages, you’ve got to hold on to the Philadelphi Corridor” because of the pressure it puts on Hamas.

Pressed on why — if holding the Gaza-Egypt border was indeed so vital — Israel had waited a full seven months into the war to capture it, Netanyahu did not answer directly, saying merely that Israel’s military strategy, backed by the political echelon, had been for the army to first focus on northern Gaza before making its way south.

This, he said, had led the IDF to kill nearly 20,000 Hamas operatives and its senior commanders and allowed it to take over Gaza City and Shifa Hospital, which the terror group had used as a key command center.

He insisted his plan all along had been to enter Rafah and the Philadelphi Corridor.

“It took a while to do, but it was a progression of military advancement that produced the result. We’re there now,” the premier declared.

“If  we leave, we won’t come back. You know it. Everybody here knows it,” he said. “Everybody in here knows what [diplomatic] pressure will be brought on us so that we don’t come back.”

Netanyahu also argued that Hamas could smuggle hostages out of Gaza to Iran or Yemen if Israel didn’t hold the Philadelphi Corridor, though such concerns had not been highlighted prior to the IDF capturing the border in May.

“We’re talking about phase one — 42 days [during which] we stay there in a somewhat reduced presence because we don’t need as large a force there,” he said.

During that first phase, Israel has agreed to begin discussions about a permanent ceasefire, which is phase two of the deal, Netanyahu said.

However, he added, Gaza can only remain demilitarized at the end of the war if the Philadelphi Corridor “remains under firm control and is not a supply line for armaments and terror equipment.”

He said that “someone has to be there,” apparently referring to post-war arrangements, adding that he didn’t care who, as long as the border isn’t “perforated.”

“Bring me anyone who will actually show us — not on paper, not in words, not in a slide — but on the ground, day after day, week after week, month after month, that they can actually prevent the recurrence of what happened there before,” he said.

“We’re open to considering it. But I don’t see that happening. And until that happens, we’re [staying] there,” the prime minister stated.

Netanyahu said the week-long ceasefire in November, which saw the release of over 100 hostages, only happened as a result “of our invasion [of Gaza] and the military pressure we put in. Hamas gave us the hostages. After that, they thought: ‘We’ll have international pressure turn on Israel, so we won’t have to make any concessions.’

“But after [the invasion of] Rafah, they began to change” their tune, he said. “If we leave Rafah, if we leave the Philadelphia Corridor, there won’t be any pressure [levers]. We won’t get the hostages.”

Haaretz on Wednesday cited an unnamed coalition source as claiming that Netanyahu decided several weeks ago that he did not want to strike a hostage release deal amid pressure from his far-right coalition partners.

“He found that the Philadelphi Corridor [issue] could enlist him the support of the moderate right as well, and that he could win points on that.”

The outlet noted that the source was not Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has warred with Netanyahu over the matter, indicating that displeasure with the premier within the coalition goes beyond the defense minister.

And yet, the anonymous source alleged, “none of the ministers, even those who know that Netanyahu is scuttling a deal, will do anything. Their political survival depends on the life of the government, so this situation will continue. Netanyahu will lead to a never-ending war because that’s what’s best for him.”

At the press briefing, Netanyahu was questioned on the Gaza civilian death toll. The Hamas-run health ministry places the total war toll at nearly 41,000, though it doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Netanyahu said some 17,000–18,000 Hamas operatives had been killed, while acknowledging that the figure appeared to be roughly equal to the civilian death toll.

Fighting in the densely populated Strip, riddled with vast tunnel networks, the IDF has achieved the “lowest ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in the history of modern urban warfare — it’s 1 to 1,” he said.

He reiterated that Israel takes precautions to limit civilian casualties and noted that it recently enabled a massive vaccination campaign against polio throughout the Strip.

“We think that every civilian death is a tragedy. For Hamas, every civilian death is a strategy,” he asserted.

He also said Israel has worked to ensure that Palestinians are moved out of harm’s way before it launches attacks. He pointed to the fierce international opposition Israel had faced over its plans to evacuate over one million Palestinians from Rafah prior to launching its offensive there, while noting that the evacuation had gone fairly smoothly and that predictions of mass civilian casualties in the offensive had proven baseless.

“Report honestly,” he told the foreign press, “because you accused us of something that is outrageous, and in fact, the accusations against us turned out to be outrageously false.

“The Israeli army is doing something that no other army has done in history and will continue to do that,” Netanyahu said.

Aid groups still argue that the repeated evacuation orders for Palestinians displaced by the war again and again have created catastrophic humanitarian conditions, including insufficient clean water and severe sanitation problems that have led to a surge of disease.

Netanyahu was asked whether the Philadelphi Corridor issue is the sole obstacle to a deal, and laughed at the notion. It’s not the only obstacle, he stressed, saying others include the ratio of hostages to terrorists and Israel’s demand to veto the release of some terrorists and to exile others.

“Hamas has rejected everything,” he said. “We’re trying to find some area to begin the negotiations; they’re refusing to do that.”