PM booed by hostages’ families at Knesset as he pledges not to ease pressure on Hamas
‘We don’t have time,’ relatives of Israelis held in Gaza shout at Netanyahu after he declares that only ‘military pressure’ will bring them home
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Relatives of Israelis held hostage in the Gaza Strip booed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he spoke at the Knesset plenum on Monday, after he declared that, despite making “every effort” to bring kidnapped Israelis home, doing so requires “military pressure” to succeed.
“We won’t stop fighting,” Netanyahu stated during a special session of the Knesset focused on those abducted by Hamas on October 7, but “we need time.”
“We don’t have time,” one relative called out in response from the Knesset gallery, after which the families chanted “Now! Now! Now!” demanding the immediate release of the hostages.
“I am also not detailing the efforts we are making at this moment and I do not think it is right to detail them,” Netanyahu continued. “I just want to emphasize: We will shake every tree and turn over every stone to return all our abductees.”
“We would not have succeeded in freeing over 100 abductees so far without the military pressure. All the pressures we exert: political, intelligence and other efforts, would not have succeeded without the military pressure,” he said.
“We aren’t stopping and we won’t stop until victory because we have no other land and no other path,” he asserted, to boos from the families, some of whom held up signs asking, variously “What if it were your father… daughter… brother?”
Netanyahu added that he had personally reached out to Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin to intervene on the hostages’ behalf and that his wife, Sara, had directly appealed to the pope.
A temporary truce deal in late November, brokered by Qatar and Egypt, saw a seven-day lull in fighting in exchange for Hamas releasing 105 hostages — 81 Israelis, 23 Thai nationals and one Filipino — while Israel freed 240 Palestinian security prisoners and allowed boosted levels of aid to enter the Strip. Hamas ended that truce by refusing to release further women and children as agreed in that deal, and resuming rocket attacks on Israel.
Israel has said it would be willing to consider another temporary truce in return for more hostage releases, while Hamas leaders have said they will not consider any more deals before Israel ends its campaign in the Strip entirely. That is a non-starter for Jerusalem, which has vowed to pursue the war until the hostages are returned and the terror group is eradicated.
On Sunday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich emphatically rejected a recent proposal by Egypt and Qatar to end the war in Gaza and create a technocratic government to govern the territory, along with the West Bank.
Israeli officials confirmed Sunday that Egypt had placed on the table a new proposal for a truce and the release of more hostages held in Gaza, with some indicating that Jerusalem is not flat-out rejecting the draft and that it could lead to negotiations.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid told the families at the Knesset on Monday that while the war’s twin goals of military victory and returning the hostages are equal in importance, they are not equal in urgency, and “we need to bring the hostages home now.”
“Sinwar can be killed next month as well,” he declared, to applause from the gallery, arguing that “we are not doing enough” to bring the kidnapped back.
“We need to do everything and we will do everything to bring them back, all of them,” he said, calling for a new deal and criticizing members of the coalition for claiming that demands for an exchange “harm the goals of the war.”
National Unity party leader Benny Gantz, who joined an emergency government with Netanyahu at the start of the conflict and is leading the war effort alongside him, also called the return of the hostages a “priority.”
“We will remove the Hamas threat. The kidnapped should be returned as soon as possible,” he said, adding that “even if we disagree on a statement or a position that is expressed…we must listen, though it may be hard to hear.”
Many of the families have been vocal in calling for a new hostage deal and Gantz’s comment may have come in response to far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s statement over the weekend that last month’s ceasefire was the direct cause of soldiers’ deaths, as it had allowed Hamas to regroup.
It is believed that 129 hostages abducted from Israel by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza — not all of them alive — after 105 civilians were released from Hamas captivity during the week-long truce in late November.
The war erupted on October 7 when Hamas led thousands of terrorists to burst into Israel from Gaza, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping over 240, mostly civilians. Israel responded with a military campaign in Gaza aimed at destroying Hamas, removing it from power in the coastal enclave, and releasing the hostages.
