PM says there’s hope for ceasefire

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says “there’s hope” for a ceasefire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but that he doesn’t know if it will happen under the current conditions, blaming the terror group for “the cruelest, most grotesque war that I’ve ever seen.”

Netanyahu tells Fox News that Israel has already accepted an Egyptian ceasefire offer but “in the Middle East it takes two to tango.”

“There’s one side that is clearly bent on escalation and there’s one side, Israel, that is defending its people as any country would under similar circumstances,” he says.

Asked about the rising number of Palestinian civilian casualties, which reportedly is in the hundreds, Netanyahu says any operation dealing with terrorists who operate from within a civilian population will cause civilian casualties.

“There are some in the West who tell us, we support Israel’s right to defend itself… as long as you don’t exercise that right,” the premier laments. “Well what else could we do, what would you do… if 80 percent of your people were in bomb shelters?”

“While we try to avoid Palestinian civilian [deaths], Hamas wants Palestinian civilian [deaths]; the more the better, so they can give you telegenic fodder,” he says.

“This is the cruelest, most grotesque war that I’ve ever seen,” Netanyahu says. “Not only does Hamas target civilians, ours, and hide behind civilians, theirs, it actually wants to pile up as many civilian deaths as possible.”