Likud minister: ‘There’s no doubt that military pressure is endangering the hostages’

Culture Minister Miki Zohar tells Haredi radio station Kol BaRama that there is “no doubt” that military pressure is putting the hostages held in Gaza in danger.

“Attempts to reach a deal did not succeed because we are facing a terrorist organization that is not rational and only understands military power,” Zohar says. “We really want a deal and hope there will be a deal. The price Israel will need to pay is heavy, but it is not an impossible price that would damage Israeli security.”

When asked how an agreement can be reached, Zohar responds: “Only with military pressure.”

“It has not yet reached a point where Sinwar and his emissaries have decided to make a deal,” says Zohar, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.

However, when asked about the incident last month in which six hostages were murdered by their captors in a Gaza tunnel as IDF troops neared, Zohar says that “there is no doubt that military pressure endangers the hostages.”

“It’s not that we think the hostages are in a good situation. Their lives are in constant danger, especially when there is fire close to where they are, or even where they are, and this is the complexity of this war,” he says.

Zohar also repeats the government line that the large protests calling for a deal and for elections are hardening Hamas’s negotiating position, and says he believes there should be a unity government, but that it should not exclude any of the political parties already in the coalition.

“There is no doubt that if there were a unity government and there were no political demonstrations, we would be in a different place. I am unequivocally in favor of a unity government. On the other hand, pushing parties out is not a unity government,” he says.