Netanyahu: Protests on behalf of hostages cause Hamas to raise its demands

Netanyahu is asked about the repeated gatherings of protesters blocking aid going into Gaza through Kerem Shalom.

“Without minimal aid to Gaza,” he says, “we cannot complete the task and finish the war.”

He says he understands why families of hostages [some of whom are among those blocking the aid] are doing so, but that Israel’s policy is to allow the aid to enter. He says instructions have been given to put a stop to the blocking of the aid trucks and expects that the matter will be resolved in the coming days.

Regarding families of hostages protesting outside his home, who the reporter says were moved further away this week, Netanyahu is asked: Was this on his orders and will he speak to the families?

Netanyahu says they have the right to protest. “I haven’t given any instructions to the security authorities” on moving them further from his home. “I meet with them all the time,” he says of the hostages’ families.

To his sorrow, he says, “someone recorded” some of those conversations, “and it doesn’t help.”

He says “Nobody has to incentivize me” to work on getting the hostages back. He recalls that he was injured as a soldier in the successful resolution of the Sabena hijacking incident [in 1972], and that his brother Yoni died in the Entebbe rescue. “I’m working [on getting the hostages back] all the time.”

He empathizes with the emotions of the hostages’ families. But the protests at Kerem Shalom, and other protests on behalf of the hostages, “as far as I can see,” he says, “only raise” Hamas’s demands and “push off the goal that we all want: the return of all of our hostages.”