Dermer predicts war will be over in a year, regional peace deals will follow
Strategic affairs minister says victory in seven-front conflict is key to future agreements, recalls he had to tell Trump that not all Gaza hostages were dead
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer predicted on Monday that the war Israel has been fighting since October 2023 will end within a year, marking the first time a senior official has given a timeframe for it to be over.
Previously, government officials have only talked of how much longer the war could continue, rather than specifying a date for its conclusion.
Israel is in the “backstretch” of the war against Hamas, Dermer said at a Jewish News Syndicate conference in Jerusalem, adding that “we need to get to the homestretch, and we need to finish this war by winning this war.”
The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded southern Israel, killed 1,200 people and abducted 251 hostages to Gaza. Iranian regional proxies then joined the fight, attacking Israel with rockets and drones from Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Iran also launched two direct missile and drone attacks on the country, and terror attacks from the West Bank continued.
“Twelve months from now,” Dermer predicted, “the seven-front war that began on October 7 will be over. Israel will have won. And I think you will see many peace agreements, that either have been forged or will be forged in the coming years of President Trump’s presidency.”
“There are many countries that will want to make peace with Israel. But the key to that is victory,” he said. “In the Middle East, when you win, when you’re strong, that’s what attracts others.”
Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer vows at a JNS conference that Israel will 'dismantle Hamas's military capability, end its rule in Gaza, ensure Gaza never poses a threat to the State of Israel, and return all of the hostages' pic.twitter.com/XQujxyxsKh
— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) April 28, 2025
Israel is spending a significant amount of time and energy discussing plans for the “day after” Hamas, said Dermer. “Just because Israel doesn’t put out a plan every five minutes doesn’t mean we’re not dealing with it.”
In order to secure victory over the long term, Israel must focus on both the demilitarization and the deradicalization of Palestinian society, Dermer argued.
“We should be magnanimous in victory, then link the development of Gaza to the deradicalization,” he said.
Dermer pointed at Saudi Arabia as an example of a society that is moving away from radicalism: “Saudi Arabia today has much greater degrees of freedom in its society. It’s not a democracy by any stretch. But look at the status of women in Saudi Arabia compared to what it was once.”
Dermer praised US President Donald Trump for walking away from the 2015 JCPOA deal with Iran in 2018, and said he was confident that Trump would walk away from “a bad deal” today as the US negotiates with the regime. “He’s been very clear: Iran’s not going to have a nuclear weapon,” said Dermer, adding that he believes Trump recognizes that Iran must “never” get the bomb. “We’re working very, very closely together,” Dermer said of the interaction with Trump on this issue.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid responded to Dermer’s comment that the war will be over in a year, saying that waiting that long would lead to the deaths of all the remaining hostages held in Gaza.
“Let’s just remember what the price is: The hostages will die. If we wait another year, we will receive 59 bodies,” Lapid told Radio 103FM on Tuesday.
Lapid said that for the war to end, a decision must be made on who will replace Hamas as ruler of Gaza.
“You did not define a goal for the war. Who will replace Hamas?” he said, apparently addressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the government.
Dermer also spoke about relations with the US, saying the goal is to keep the daylight between Washington and Jerusalem as narrow as possible. He recalled that, when he met then-president-elect Trump, he needed to explain that not all the hostages remaining in Gaza at the time were dead.
“I corrected him and I said, no, there are 51 who are alive,” recounted Dermer, who said the meeting took place at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 59 hostages, including 58 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF. The other hostages were released in two ceasefire deals, a weeklong one in November 2023 and another that began in January this year but collapsed after several weeks.
Talks for another ceasefire have stalled on Israel’s insistence that Hamas be dismantled and removed from power in Gaza, and Hamas’s demand that a ceasefire bring a complete end to the war.
Dermer, who leads Israel’s negotiating team in ceasefire talks, claimed that Israel will neither “forget about the hostages and finish the war” to destroy Hamas, nor will it “forget about the war and just return the hostages.”
Many families of hostages, as well as former hostages now back in Israel, are pressing the government to agree to a deal that brings all the hostages back in one swap, even if it means ending the war. They have also called on Trump to facilitate such a deal.
The Times of Israel Community.