Dermer predicts war will be over in a year, says he had to tell Trump not all hostages were dead

In November, US President Donald Trump thought all the hostages remaining in Gaza were dead, says Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, speaking at the Jewish News Syndicate conference in Jerusalem.

“I corrected him and I said, no, there are 51 who are alive,” recounts Dermer, who says the meeting took place at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida.

Israel is spending a significant amount of time and energy discussing plans for the “day after” Hamas, says Dermer: “Just because Israel doesn’t put out a plan every five minutes doesn’t mean we’re not dealing with it.”

Israel is in the “back stretch” of the war against Hamas, he says, adding that “we need to get to the home stretch, and we need to finish this war by winning this war.”

A year from now, he predicts, “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, either that have been forged, or will be forged in the coming years of President Trump’s presidency.”

“The key to that is victory,” he stresses.

In order to secure that victory over the long term, Israel must focus on the deradicalization of Palestinian society, Dermer argues.

“We should be magnanimous in victory, then link the development of Gaza to the deradicalization,” says Dermer.

He points 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.”

Speaking about the security challenges on the northern border, Dermer says that Israel did not know that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad was going to fall, and repeats Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s revelation that Israel prevented Iranian reinforcements from arriving.

He also pledges that Israel will continue operating in Lebanon, despite an ongoing ceasefire.

“We’re going to continue to enforce the deal so that Hezbollah cannot rearm itself,” he says.