Netanyahu says it’s ‘a fiction’ to claim he funded Hamas; reveals he’s wearing a hostages dog tag

In answer to a question, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulls out from under his shirt a dog tag he is wearing urging the return of the hostages, during a press conference at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, December 16, 2023. (Screenshot)
In answer to a question, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulls out from under his shirt a dog tag he is wearing urging the return of the hostages, during a press conference at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, December 16, 2023. (Screenshot)

Answering a final volley of questions at a Tel Aviv press conference, Prime Minister Netanyahu says “I don’t intend to get into politics” when it is put to him that Likud MK Yuli Edelstein has intimated he has no political future when the war is over.

Defense Minister Gallant, asked about when Israelis can return to their homes in the north and south, says people will start returning to areas near Gaza in January. The process will work “from north to south, far to near.”

He says areas close to northern Gaza are gradually becoming less endangered.

On the northern border, he says, “deterrence is strong.” But in order for people to be able to go home, there has to be an area with no Hezbollah presence on the other side of the Lebanese border — and this will be achieved either through negotiation or by force.

Netanyahu is asked about international support and opposition for his day-after vision of no Palestinian Authority role in Gaza.

He says lots of international players agree but won’t say so. They say they want him to give the Palestinians the start of a statehood process, and that he can then find a way to block it, he claims.

He says he recalls US President Biden, when he visited Israel as vice president, asking him what the solution to the Palestinian conflict will be: “I told him the Palestinians can have all the rights to run their lives but none of the sovereign rights to endanger our lives,” Netanyahu says. When Biden responded that this would not constitute sovereignty, “I said ‘true.'”

He again says many agree with his day-after plans: “I don’t even rule out that we can reach an agreement with the United States on this,” he adds.

Asked about fuel and humanitarian aid for Gaza, he says Israel pledged to the US, under the terms of the truce in late November, to allow the entry of “minimal fuel” to prevent the spread of disease and humanitarian collapse, and of 200 trucks carrying food and humanitarian aid daily.

The Rafah crossing only has capacity to properly check 100 trucks a day, so Israel has temporarily opened the Kerem Shalom crossing to check another 100 trucks. Rafah’s capacity is to be expanded, with US funding, he says, and when that happens Kerem Shalom will close.

He is asked why he kept enabling the entry of Qatari funds into Gaza, strengthening Hamas’s rule, and also why he is not critical of Qatar for its support for Hamas.

He says he has “heavy criticism” regarding Qatar and “you’ll hear more about this.” For now, he says, he is focused on the hostages.

On the issue of Qatar’s funding for Hamas, he says money went into Gaza “before my governments and after… not to strengthen Hamas but to prevent humanitarian disaster.”

He says he compared Hamas to Islamic State in 2014, and that Israel harmed Hamas’s capabilities in a series of conflicts, killing thousands of terrorists during his years in power.

“One thing we didn’t do: We didn’t go to invade Gaza or to do what we are doing now because there was no national consensus for it, and certainly no international legitimacy.”

Today, he says, “there is national consensus but look how hard we have to fight on the question of international legitimacy” even after the monstrous assault of October 7.

The notion that he funded Hamas, he says angrily, “is a fiction that they are always nurturing… The truth is what I’m telling you now.”

Finally, he is asked if he is wearing a “Bring them home” hostages dog tag and, without a word, unbuttons the top of his shirt to show that he is.

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