Netanyahu says Hamas war could last into new school year

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, opening the weekly cabinet meeting, says that Israel will not halt Operation Protective Edge until security and calm have been restored.

He says Hamas will pay a heavy price for the crimes it is committing. “I call on Gaza residents to leave any location from which Hamas is conducting terror activities,” he says. “Every such place is a target for us. We have seen in recent days that there isn’t, and won’t be, any immunity for someone who fires on the citizens of Israel.”

Operation Protective Edge will continue “until its goals are achieved. I said on the first day of the operation that it can take time and we’re prepared for the possibility that the campaign will last even until after the start of the school year.”

Netanyahu speaks now “to the dear residents of the Gaza periphery, the villages and kibbutzim. I admire your fortitude, I admire your suffering, and I share your pain. We will do everything to help you get through these difficult days. In the next cabinet meeting we’re going to approve an extraordinary package of aid to your towns. We are with you, and we will stay with you until the quiet is restored, and afterward as well.”

He adds: We embarked on Operation Protective Edge in order to restore for you and all Israel’s residents the quiet and security, and not to end the operation until this goal is achieved.”

“The more determined we remain, the more we demonstrate patience, the sooner our enemies will understand that they will not succeed in wearing us down,” says the prime minister. “While they try to tire us out, they are being crushed. I think anyone who observes [Hamas’s losses] in recent days understands this concept. The IDF continues to deliver, and to increase, its painful blows against Hamas and the terror groups in the Gaza Strip, and will continue to do this until the goal is achieved.”

Netanyahu says many states “in the region and the West” are beginning to understand that “this is a single front, because Hamas is Da’ash [Islamic State] and Da’ash is Hamas. They simply behave in the same way. I’d say, they are [born] from the same poisoned tree. They are two extremist Islamic terror [organizations] who kidnap and murder innocents, who execute their own people, who don’t shy from any means, including the intentional murder of children. In recent days,” he notes, “we’ve heard from Hamas spokespeople what we have said the whole time – that they are those who murdered (Israeli teenagers) Eyal (Yifrach), Gil-ad (Shaar) and Naftali (Fraenkel, in the West Bank in June). Two movements that are trying to establish Islamic rule, caliphates without human rights over large territories, accompanied by the massacre of minorities, the lack of respect for the human rights of anyone, women, men, children, Christians.”

Says the prime minister: “With every day that passes, the world increasingly understands that Hamas behaves like Da’ash and Da’ash like Hamas.”

“The state of Israel will continue to stand alongside the civilized world in its war against the extremist, violent form of Islam,” he concludes.