Netanyahu says ready for ceasefire in Gaza to free hostages, but won’t end war

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he would accept a pause in the war in Gaza, speaking in his first interview since the ceasefire in Lebanon. “I am ready for a ceasefire in the south when we think we can achieve the release of the hostages,” he says to the rightwing Channel 14. “I am ready for a ceasefire at any time.”

At the same, he stresses that he will not accept an end to the war, a core Hamas demand. Without going into details, Netanyahu says Israel is doing “many many things” to try to reach a deal.

Now that there is a ceasefire in Lebanon and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is dead, the conditions have significantly improved for a hostage deal with Hamas, he argues.

“Hamas hoped that Iran would come to save it, it did not happen; it hoped that the Houthis would come to save it – it did not happen,” he says, “but above all it hoped that Hezbollah would come to save it, and indeed Nasrallah said on the second day when he attacked, ‘We will continue until Israel stops its attacks on Hamas.’ There is no Hezbollah [at Hamas’s side now]. That’s why I think the conditions have changed very much for the better, not only because of the separation of the theaters but also because of the… elimination of Sinwar.”

He says the conditions in Lebanon are different than in Gaza: Israel is trying to destroy Hamas, whereas in Lebanon at this stage it is working to prevent Hezbollah from rearming. While Israel can prevent arms smuggling in Lebanon by bombing border crossings and striking in Syria, that can’t happen in Gaza, because Israel won’t attack Egypt. Therefore, Israel has to remain on the Philadelphi corridor, the road on the Egypt-Gaza border, he insinuates.

Netanyahu says that he accepted a ceasefire in Lebanon because “we achieved exactly what we intended to achieve.”