Skip to playerSkip to main content
  • 1 year ago
During a press briefing on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked whether Israel is proceeding with its new offensive in Gaza with he understanding that it will retrieve all remaining hostages alive.
Transcript
00:00Thank you, Prime Minister. Is Israel working proceeding in the belief, in the understanding
00:08that it can and will recover all 20 hostages alive militarily? Or is it proceeding in the
00:13belief or understanding that conditions of their captivity, Hamas strategy will make
00:18that impossible? Look, my goal is to get all of the 20 out
00:23alive and also all the ones who are not alive. In the beginning of the war, we were told
00:29by a very senior commander. He said, look, we have to get used to the idea that we're not
00:37going to see even one of them alive. And I disagreed. I said, we'll get most and possibly
00:44all of them if we apply judiciously both military pressure and political, diplomatic pressure.
00:53So far, out of 255 hostages, we got 205 out, of which 148 are alive. 148 are alive. We
01:01have 20 living ones left in Hamas captivity and 30 who are not alive, as I said before.
01:10If we don't do anything, we're not going to get them out. The option of just doing a war
01:16of attrition from defensive positions has not proved itself. And I think it will just, it
01:23won't get them out, but I think it will draw us into a protracted conflict that doesn't
01:27bring the war to an end. The move that I'm talking about, I think, has the possibility of
01:33getting them out. We're talking about how to, I don't want to go into details, but how to
01:42get the remaining hostages alive as we close in on Hamas. And there are various ways that
01:50I think creative ways that this can be done. But again, I won't go into that now.
Comments

Recommended