As a result of the events in Israel’s south, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu cut short his visit to France, where he attended a peace forum commemorating the 100’s anniversary of the armistice of World War I. During the developing situation in Gaza, the Israeli leader held a series of consultations with Israel’s security establishment, after which it was decided to return to Israel for further consultations. The deteriorating situation vis-à-vis the Gaza Strip had apparently come as a surprise to the Israeli leader, that after he announced in a Paris press conference that Israel seeks to avoid “an unnecessary war with Gaza.” Netanyahu stressed that while he is subject to criticism, the measures taken by Israel aim at preventing the humanitarian collapse of 2 million Palestinians that are held hostage by the Islamist Hamas organization. “I do the minimal things necessary to maintain our security and to prevent the collapse of the humanitarian situation of the 2 million Palestinians who are held hostage by this Hamas, this terrorist organization,” PM Netanyahu said.
While Israel is actively seeking to improve the lives of the Palestinian population in Gaza, through coordination with regional Arab countries, Netanyahu stressed that unless Hamas recognizes Israel’s right to exist and stops its aspired goal of annihilating the Jewish State – no political resolution can be realized with the internationally recognized entity. “Hamas is not about to except the Jewish State, by the way if it did then there is a solution, there is a vision, there is many possibilities that I think are available. But it starts with that, if your enemy wants to destroy you, what can you talk about the method of your annihilation. You can talk about bringing prisoners and fallen soldiers. You can talk about humanitarian arrangements but you cant have a political resolution with those who are committed to your dissolution, to your destruction to your destruction, that’s absurd, that’s the situation,” Netanyahu said.
When asked whether a resolution with regional Arab powers was subject to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, Netanyahu underscored that the Arab world understands that Israel is not to blame for the Palestinian dysfunctionality. “The fact that this taboo is been broken that is that Arab states are saying that what we know Palestinian politics are, they know and you know too, anybody who looks at it objectively understands that half of the Palestinians are held hostage by radical Islamist and the other half cant stand up to them or has its own dysfunctionalities in there politics, ok. So to blame Israel for the fact that they are unable or unwilling to come to the table or don’t want us anyway near the table don’t want us walking on the face of the earth is absurd, Arab countries understand that Arab governments understand that, they want the benefit of cooperating with Israel,” Netanyahu said.
Prime Minister Netanyahu also took the opportunity to condemn the international community for their continued efforts to preserve the nuclear agreement with Iran, a regime that openly seeks the annihilation of the Jewish state. “Here is a regime, Iran that wants our destruction they repeat it more often than Hamas, so what’s the world doing with them how does it deals with them? I ask that question. In fact I face the entire world, all the great powers, quite a few opposition in my own country. I said how can you make deals that pave the highway to a nuclear bomb within a few years and give them billions of dollars with which they can build their empire of aggression and terror and we just uncovered two of their terror efforts here on the soil of Europe, how can you make this deal with them, how?,” Netanyahu said.