Netanyahu rejects ‘delusional’ Hamas plan
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected Hamas’s terms for a ceasefire and hostage-release agreement, calling them “delusional”.
Mrnetanyahuvowedtopress ahead with Israel’s war against Hamas, now in its fifth month, until achieving “absolute victory”.
He made the comments shortly after meeting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, whohasbeentravellingaround the region in the hope of securing a ceasefire agreement.
“Surrendering to Hamas’s delusional demands that we heard now not only won’t lead to freeing the captives, it will just invite another massacre,” Mr Netanyahu said in a nationally televised evening news conference.
“We are on the way to an absolute victory,” he said, adding that the operation would last months, not years. “There is no other solution.”
He ruled out any arrangement that leaves Hamas in full or partial control of Gaza. He also said that Israel is the “only power capable of guaranteeing security in the long term”.
Earlier, Mr Blinken said that “a lot of work” remains to bridge the gap between Israel and Hamas on the terms for any deal.
Hamas laid out a detailed, three-phase plan to unfold over four-and-a-half months, responding to a proposal drawn up by the United States, Israel, Qatar and Egypt.
The plan stipulates that all hostages would be released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, including senior militants, and an end to the war.
Israel has made destroying Hamas’s governing and military abilities one of its wartime objectives, and Hamas's proposal would effectively leave it in power in Gaza and allow it to rebuilditsmilitarycapabilities.
US president Joe Biden said Hamas’s demands are “a little over the top” but that negotiations will continue.
The deadliest round of fighting in the history of the Israelipalestinian conflict has killed more than 27,000 Palestinians, levelled entire neighbourhoods, driven the vast majority of Gaza’s population from their homes and pushed a quarter of the population to starvation.
Iran-backed militant groups have conducted attacks, mostly on US and Israeli targets, in solidarity with the Palestinians, drawing reprisals as the risk of a wider conflict grows.
Israel remains deeply shaken by the October 7 attack in which Hamas militants burst through the country's vaunted defences and rampaged across southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 250, around half of whom remain in captivity in Gaza.
Mr Blinken, who is on his fifth visit to the region since the war broke out, is trying to advance the ceasefire talks while pushing for a larger postwar settlement in which Saudi Arabia would normalise relations with Israel in return for a “clear, credible, time-bound path to the establishment of a Palestinian state”.
But the increasingly unpopular Mr Netanyahu is opposed to Palestinian statehood, and his hawkish governing coalition could collapse if he is seen as making too many concessions.