Netanyahu says he doesn’t want to ‘prolong the war,’ claims Gaza City op will allow for ‘creative’ ways to recover remaining hostages

By Nava Freiberg

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10 August 2025, 6:46 pm

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Nava Freiberg is The Times of Israel's deputy diplomatic correspondent.

Anti-government, pro-hostage deal protesters demonstrate outside the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv, August 9, 2025. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his military plan to take over Gaza City could aid efforts to retrieve the remaining living and dead hostages in the Strip — most of whom are believed to be held in the central Strip area — through “various” and “creative” methods.

“The move that I’m talking about, I think, has the possibility of getting them out. We’re talking about… I don’t want to go into details, but how to get the remaining hostages alive as we close in on Hamas,” Netanyahu says at a press conference for foreign media.

“There are various ways that I think — creative ways — that this can be done, but again, I won’t go into that now,” he continues.

“The option of doing a war of attrition from defensive positions has not proven itself. I think it… won’t get them out, but I think it will draw us into a protracted conflict that doesn’t bring the war to an end,” the premier adds.

Israel’s top security officials, including IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, Mossad chief David Barnea, and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi are all said to believe that conquering Gaza City will endanger the hostages.

Netanyahu insists that he does “not want to prolong the war,” saying, “I want to end the war. I think the other suggestions [for future actions in Gaza] would have prolonged it.”

There might have been a “dripping” of hostage releases over an “endless” period, he says, unless Israel was ready to “capitulate, and even then I don’t think we’ll get all the hostages. And if we capitulate, it means that Hamas will rearm, regroup, and carry out all the threats that it openly professes every day” to destroy Israel. “You can’t leave them there. We’re not going to do that.”

“I think that prolonging the war means that many of [the hostages] could be starved to death… and I don’t want that,” he adds, addressing the videos recently published by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad of two hostages appearing in a severely emaciated state.