Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel was pursuing a policy of deterring the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers from launching attacks but did not rule out a further escalation, including “conquering” the Palestinian enclave.
Netanyahu gave a briefing to some 70 foreign diplomats at the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, where he filled them in on the situation after over a week of fighting that has seen Gaza terror groups rain rockets down on Israel, which has responded with pounding airstrikes on Gaza.
There is increasing international pressure for the two sides to agree, via mediators, on a ceasefire.
Speaking of Gaza’s rulers, the Hamas terror group, which has led the rocket attacks, Netanyahu said, “You can either conquer them — and that’s always an open possibility — or you can deter them.”
“We are engaged right now in forceful deterrence, but I have to say, we are not ruling out anything,” the prime minister said.
Asked how much longer the operation will go on, Netanyahu said he could not give an exact timeframe for when it would end.
“We aren’t standing with a stopwatch. We are concerned with the objectives of the operation,” Netanyahu said.
“Previous operations lasted a long time, so it is not possible to set a timeframe,” he said in the closed-door session.
Since the violence erupted last Monday, Israel has streamed military forces and assets to the Gaza border area, including tanks, artillery, and infantry units.
Among those who attended the briefing were diplomats from the US, the European Union, Russia, China, India, Germany, Austria, Australia, Japan, the UK, Brazil, Canada, and Italy.
The prime minister accused the Palestinians of provoking the current round of fighting, saying Israel hoped to restore quiet “quickly” and was doing everything it could to avoid civilian casualties. He screened a video clip that showed an airstrike being called off at the last minute because there were children in the area.
Hamas, he said, “targets civilians while hiding behind civilians using them as human shields. This is the problem that we face — because Hamas is embedded deeply in civilian areas, because it uses civilian human shields. Democracies have a choice. They can say there is nothing we can do. We will absorb attacks against our cities. We can do that or we can level the cities. In World War II, when western cities, specifically London and some British cities, were targeted this way by thousands of rockets, their response was to level cities.”
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