PM Netanyahu is vowing a tough reaction if Hamas renews hostilities, as it has threatened to do at 8 a.m.
“They might reject an extension. If they attack us, we’ll respond in kind, as any government would,” he tells Germany’s ZDF television.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) gives an interview in his office, August 7, 2014. (photo credit: Kobi Gideon/GPO/Flash90)
An Israeli defense official earlier said Israel would respond “forcefully,” and that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon had instructed the military “to be ready for anything.”
Earlier, a text message from Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, warned there would be no extension of the ceasefire — set to expire in less than six hours — if there is no agreement to permanently lift the blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt since the terrorist group overran Gaza in 2007.
Abu Obeida, the al-Qassam spokesman, appeared on the group’s al-Aqsa TV station and says Hamas is “ready to go to war again… The resistance is capable of imposing its conditions.”
A security official in Egypt said Egyptian negotiators were struggling to bring the two sides closer together, with one official saying Hamas and other Gaza militants were refusing to compromise.
— Associated Press, Times of Israel staff
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