Vowing to press Gaza strikes, Netanyahu says hostage talks only to be held ‘under fire’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on Tuesday to press heavy strikes on Gaza that resumed hours earlier, saying any future hostage negotiations with Hamas would be conducted “under fire.” after weeks of  fragile ceasefire in the Gaza Strip failed to bear fruit.

A fragile two-month ceasefire in the Strip came to an abrupt halt in the early hours of Tuesday when Israel launched a shock aerial offensive on Gaza, saying weeks of negotiations to extend the truce had failed to bear fruit.

In a televised address on Tuesday evening, Netanyahu said that the military campaign was launched on the recommendation of Israel’s intelligence services and the IDF, and that it was a last resort after weeks of failed efforts to get Hamas to free more hostages.

The premier asserted that following the end of the first phase of a would-be multi-phased ceasefire and hostage release deal, Hamas had turned down all subsequent proposals to release more of the 59 hostages still held in Gaza, of whom 24 are believed to be alive.

“From now on, negotiations will be conducted only under fire,” Netanyahu said.

“This is only the beginning,” he warned Hamas.

While Israel is currently only conducting an aerial offensive, Channel 12 cited unnamed Israeli sources as saying that officials were leaving the option of a renewed ground offensive on the table as well.

Senior officials told the news outlet that unless Hamas started showing flexibility in negotiations over the next few days, the operation would gradually expand and intensify.

Israel, said Netanyahu, had accepted an American proposal for hostages to be freed and the ceasefire to be temporarily extended, but “Hamas rejected every proposal, time after time.”

US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff presented a bridge proposal last week that would have seen the first phase of ceasefire extended by several weeks, in exchange for the release of five living hostages, but Israel said the proffer was rejected by Hamas.

Israel had “extended the ceasefire for weeks during which we did not receive hostages” in order to exhaust all the chances for Hamas to end its obduracy, Netanyahu said, noting that negotiating teams had been dispatched to Doha and Cairo, to no avail.

Israel’s hostage team returned from a brief visit to Cairo on Monday, and Hamas had not yet managed to send a delegation of its own to the Egyptian capital before Israel launched its renewed offensive.

Hamas spokesman Abdel-Latif Al-Qanoua told Reuters on Tuesday that the terror group was still in touch with mediators despite the renewed offensive, and was interested in completing the implementation of the original deal.

Al-Qanoua also alleged in a statement that Hamas had not refused Witkoff’s proposal for a temporary ceasefire extension, and in reality had “looked at it positively.”

“Hamas’s interest is in continuing the agreement, and Hamas will continue to be flexible and positive with the mediators in order to curb the aggression against our people and oblige Israel to the agreement,” he said.

Witkoff last week described Hamas’s counter-offer as a “non-starter.”

Hamas has insisted that it will not accept any proposal that deviates from the original terms of the framework ceasefire deal, which was supposed to have entered its second phase earlier this month.

The second phase envisioned Israel fully withdrawing from Gaza and agreeing to permanently end the war in exchange for the release of the remaining living hostages.

While Israel signed on to the deal, Netanyahu has long insisted that Israel will not end the war until Hamas’s governing and military capabilities have been destroyed.

Accordingly, Israel refused to even hold talks regarding the terms of phase two, which were supposed to begin on February 3.

Nonetheless, the ceasefire remained in place for roughly two and a half weeks after the conclusion of the first phase, as mediators worked to broker new terms for the truce’s extension.

Netanyahu, in his address, maintained that he had always promised to return to fighting should Hamas remain implacable.

“We have gone back to fighting with force,” he said, promising to ratchet up pressure on Hamas.

Several families of hostages publicly criticized the return to fighting Tuesday, expressing worries that it would lead to worsened conditions for their loved ones and make freeing them more difficult.

Released hostage Yarden Bibas, whose wife and two young sons were slain in captivity, said on Facebook that Israel’s return to fighting brought him back to Gaza, where he feared for his life. “Military pressure endangers hostages, an agreement brings them back,” he said.

“My heart, all of our hearts, are with the hostages and their families,” he said, insisting that he remained committed to working tirelessly to free all hostages, living and dead. “They are going through an inhuman nightmare every day, every minute.”

Netanyahu insisted that Israel would “continue to fight” until all of its war goals are achieved — returning the hostages, destroying Hamas, and ensuring Gaza will never again constitute a threat to Israel.”

Netanyahu denied that any political considerations were behind the resumed military operation in Gaza, blasting what he said were media “lies.”

Critics of the premier, including opposition lawmakers and the families of the hostages, have accused Netanyahu of abandoning negotiations in favor of military action for his own political interests. Hours after the offensive began, the far-right Otzma Yehudit rejoined the government it had resigned from two months ago in protest of the ceasefire agreement.

“They have no shame, they have no red lines,” Netanyahu asserted of his critics in the media.

The Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security agency said on Tuesday afternoon the strikes during the day had targeted cells of terror operatives, rocket-launching positions, weapons, and other Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror infrastructure. Health authorities in the Hamas-controlled Strip said 408 people had been killed in one of the biggest single-day tolls since the war erupted. Hamas acknowledged that several of its senior members were among the dead.

“It was a night of hell. It felt like the first days of the war,” said Rabiha Jamal, 65, a mother of five from Gaza City.

Visiting troops in southern Gaza’s Rafah Tuesday, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir vowed that Israel’s renewed offensive would take place alongside efforts to free the hostages.

“Your mission is to protect the communities here,” he told troops. “We are in an ongoing action against Hamas, alongside a full commitment to return the hostages.”

Mediators make concerted push for calm

A former Egyptian official told the Washington Post Tuesday that Egypt and Qatar were working together to push for a renewed ceasefire.

“Egypt and Qatar are planning to have quick connection with Israel side for urgent ceasefire and to start arranging quick meetings in Cairo for entering the next phase and exchange hostages and prisoners in order to achieve peace,” said the official, who was briefed on the plan.

The former official said that Egypt was “trying to contact the American side to put pressure on [Israel] to accept the ceasefire.”

Hamas on Tuesday evening called for additional “friendly countries” to join Egypt and Qatar in piling pressure on Israel and the US.

Alongside the renewed offensive in Gaza, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Tuesday that Jerusalem was also considering threatening to annex a portion of the Gaza Strip for each hostage harmed in captivity.

According to the unsourced report, Israel believes Hamas is more concerned about losing territory than it is by the high death toll and the devastating impact of the war on the Strip’s 2.3 million residents.

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 59 hostages, of whom 58 were seized during the Hamas-led invasion and massacre in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF.

Hamas released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire that began in January. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war. In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners, and Gazan terror suspects detained during the war.

Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 41 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.

The body of another soldier killed in 2014, Lt. Hadar Goldin, is still being held by Hamas, and is counted among the 59 hostages.

Agencies contributed to this report.