The Israeli public backs the war's aim of destroying Hamas in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as talks for a hostage deal remained at a standstill, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads is set to arrive in the region with a stop in Israel on Monday.
“Regarding the demand of Hamas… that we commit to ending the war without achieving our goals - the elimination of Hamas and everything else - I am not ready, that's clear. Not only me, I think the whole [Israeli] public is not ready,” Netanyahu said.
"We are committed to absolute victory. We do not want and cannot abandon the [Gaza] arena,” not just because of the fallen soldiers but also because the country’s future is at stake, he said.
He issued his words in a meeting with The Valor Forum, just one day after the IDF’s dramatic rescue of four hostages held in Gaza since October 7: Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 41.
Netanyahu, who has come under persistent public pressure to make a deal for the return of the remaining 120 hostages in Gaza, has said he is committed to freeing them, but would only accept an agreement that allows Israel to destroy Hamas.
Public pressure to release remaining hostages
The terror group, in turn, has insisted that any deal must include at the start, an Israeli pledge to end the war and withdraw from Gaza. It has also demanded that Israel free Palestinian security prisoners and terrorists held in its jails.
The United States has been amid a massive diplomatic blitz to force Hamas to agree to a three-phased deal, which US President Joe Biden unveiled on May 31. Hamas has spoken against it but has not fully rejected it.
White House National Security Advisor Jack Sullivan took the airwave from Paris, on the sidelines of Biden’s visit there, to urge Hamas to agree to the deal, which deals with the question of a permanent ceasefire only starting on day 16 of the first phase.
Israel has agreed to move forward and agree to the lull in the fighting that would accompany the agreement, as long as it does not have to promise to end the war at this stage.
Sullivan said that the best answer to the Palestinian suffering in Gaza was “a ceasefire and hostage deal.”
He spoke amid reports that over 270 Palestinians had been killed during Saturday’s hostage rescue operation. The IDF initially put that number at 90, of which an unspecified number were combatants.
“Why is President Biden going out publicly and calling for a ceasefire and hostage deal, because he thinks the best way to get all of the hostages home is in a deal where they're brought out diplomatically where there's no need for military operations to get every last hostage out,” Sullivan told CNN.
“Unfortunately, we are going to continue to see ongoing conflict and military operations in which Israel makes efforts to recover its citizens and frankly, to recover American citizens.
“What we would much prefer to see is a ceasefire where the hostage has come out peacefully” and that kind of an agreement is already on the table, he said.
“Israel has said yes to it. Now Hamas needs to say yes to it. That's where President Biden's full effort, energy, and attention is.
“You heard yesterday from the French president here in Paris, that France stands behind that the world stands behind that, and Hamas should come to the table and say yes,” Sullivan said.
Hamas' armed al-Qassam Brigades said in a video posted on its Telegram channel on Sunday that three hostages were killed, including a U.S. citizen, during Saturday’s rescue mission.
The group did not release the names of those said to be killed, but the video showed what appeared to be three unidentifiable corpses using censor bars over their faces.
"Your captives will not be released unless our prisoners are freed," the video added.
A Hamas assertion on Saturday that some hostages were killed in the operation was dismissed shortly afterward as a "blatant lie" by an Israeli military spokesman.
The video was a sharp reminder as Israelis celebrated a rare euphoric moment of seeing hostages come home alive, that the mission had not done much to change the situation on the ground, in which Israeli was in an existential battle with Iran and its proxy forces, Hamas and Hezbollah.
“We are also obliged to return the hostages in different ways,” Netanyahu said, “But first of all we are committed to securing our future. Our future will not exist here in front of Iran's axis of evil and its metastases if we simply bow our heads” and give up, he explained.
Israel, Netanyahu explained, is facing threats from seven arenas: Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, militias in Iraq and Syria, Iran, and the International Criminal Court.
It's a situation that requires national unity, he stressed.
Reuters contributed to this report.