NETANYAHU VOWS PUSH AMID CEASE-FIRE TALKS
Rafah offensive might be ‘delayed’ but not prevented by hostage talks
Negotiations for a temporary cease-fire that could see dozens of hostages freed from terrorist captivity are ongoing, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But a planned military offensive in southern Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces to oust Hamas fighters from the city of Rafah will still occur, with or without such an accord, the Israeli Prime Minister continued Sunday.
Netanyahu said that he would meet with his generals on to hash out a plan to protect the estimated 1.2 million Palestinian civilians currently displaced from their homes in northern Gaza to Rafah ahead of a planned offensive against four battalions of Hamas fighters which the IDF says are hidden there among the civilian population.
A temporary peace agreement could cause an assault on Rafah to “be delayed somewhat,” Netanyahu said, but the military operation will eventually go forward one way or the other and with or without an exchange of hostages. Netanyahu made his remarks Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation.
“I’ve asked the army to submit to me a double plan, first to evacuate to enable the evacuation of the Palestinian civilians in Gaza, and, obviously, second, to destroy the remaining Hamas battalions. That gets us a real, real distance towards the completion of our victory, and thatwe’re not going to give it up,” he said. “But it’ll happen. If we don’t have a deal, we’ll do it anyway. It has to be done. Because total victory is our goal, and total victory is within reach. Not months away, weeks away once we begin the operation.”
The Biden White House has called on the Netanyahu government to come up with a realistic plan to move civilians out of harm’s way before any offensive begins in Rafah.
According to the White House, Biden spoke with Netanyahu earlier in February, when he “reaffirmed his view that a military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the more than one million people sheltering there.”
Ahead of the weekend, National Security Communications Advisor Rear Adm. John Kirby said the Biden Administration would not back an IDF plan to mount a ground offensive in Rafah without seeing a proposal to relocate already displaced civilians, and that so far, “there’s been no plan presented to us that I’m tracking.”
“We wouldn’t support those kinds of operations unless or until the Israelis had properly accounted for the safety and security of the more than 1 million people that are seeking refuge down there,” Kirby said.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told NBC on Sunday that the President still had not seen a plan for the offensive and that “we believe that this operation should not go forward until or unless we see” a plan.
Netanyahu said there is space for the civilians north of Rafah, in the territory many displaced Palestinians just fled.
“Now there’s room for them to go north of Rafah, to the places that we’ve already finished fighting in,” he said. “It’s important to understand, moving civilians out of an area that is going to be a combat zone is not a bad thing. It’s a good thing.”
If a temporary peace agreement is reached between Hamas negotiators and the IDF, it could come along with an exchange of 40 hostages, many of whom are elderly, young children or injured, for up to 300 Palestinian
women, children and elderly currently in Israeli prisons, a senior official from Egypt told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing negotiations.
Netanyahu said the negotiations have been difficult, due to unrealistic demands from Hamas. The Israeli government and Palestinian negotiators aren’t just in different ball parks, the Prime Minister said, they are on different planets.
“We want to liberate the remaining hostages, we’ve already brought half of them back. And I appreciate the effort, the combined effort of Israel, the United States, to bring back the remaining hostages. I can’t tell you if we’ll have it. But if Hamas goes down from its delusional claims and goes down- can bring them down to earth, then we’ll have the progress that we all want,” he said.
Conflict in the region comes after the events of Oct. 7, when, with little apparent warning, Hamas backed terrorists entered Israel from the Gaza Strip under the cover of a prolonged rocket barrage. The terrorists were able to kill indiscriminately for hours before the IDF was able to push them back into Gaza, but not before hundreds of Israelis and foreign nationals were taken hostage and spirited into Hamas-controlled territory.
According to Israeli officials more than 100 hostages — many small children or elderly — are still missing, and dozens are presumed dead.
Israel responded to the attack by declaring war on the Hamas terrorist organization. The air and ground campaign which followed has claimed more than 29,000 Palestinian lives and left many tens of thousands more injured, according to the Hamas-run and Gazabased Ministry of Health. Those figures have not been independently verified.