Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reiterated that his country was not seeking to occupy Gaza but \u201cour goal is to demilitarise and deradicalise\u201d the Hamas-controlled enclave. He made the remarks during a CBS News interview on Thursday in which he also insisted that Israel is trying to wipe out Hamas \u201cwith minimal civilian casualties\u201d. \u201cWe want overall military responsibility to prevent the re-emergence of terror\u2026 We\u2019re not seeking to occupy. That\u2019s not our goal. But our goal is to make sure what happens there is different. \u201cTo do that we have to (do to) demilitarise Gaza and we have to deradicalise Gaza,\u201d the Prime Minister added.<\/p>\n
He also said that liberating Palestinians from Hamas will \u201cgive them a real future\u201d. Regarding the Israeli military raid at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, Netanyahu said there were \u201cstrong indications\u201d that Hamas was holding the hostages it captured after the October 7 attack inside the facility. \u201cWe had strong indications that they were held in the Shifa Hospital, which is one of the reasons we entered the hospital,\u201d he told CBS News. \u201cIf they were (there), they were taken out,\u201d the Prime Minister said, adding that his government has \u201cintelligence about the hostages\u201d.<\/p>\n
According to authorities, 237 people are being captive in Gaza, including Israelis, foreign nationals and children. So far, four civilian hostages have been released by Hamas, and a female soldier was rescued by Israeli forces. Israel has maintained that the Hamas of having a command centre underneath the hospital, as well as using the medical complex as a base. The allegations however, have been repeatedly denied by the militant group. When asked about a proposed deal to exchange prisoners and how close is Israel to securing the release of the hostages, Netanyahu told CBS News: \u201cWe\u2019re closer than we were before we began the ground action\u2026 (The ground offensive has) put pressure on Hamas to achieve a ceasefire.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll have a temporary ceasefire if we can get our hostages back. I don\u2019t think it serves that purpose for me to elaborate further on that.\u201d But he declined to say whether Israel would agree to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for hostages, saying it was \u201cconfidential\u201d. On a two-state solution to end the crisis, the Prime Minister said the Palestinians need a leadership change. \u201cI say let the Palestinians have all the powers to govern themselves, but none of the powers to threaten Israel\u2026 And that means not only making sure that Gaza is demilitarised, but also that Gaza is deradicalised. \u201cAnd if you ask me, we need a different civilian leadership than the one that has been offered to the Palestinians today,\u201d he told CBS News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reiterated that his country was not seeking to occupy Gaza but \u201cour goal is\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":11584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[1480,1450,1380,2932,1418,536,3308],"class_list":["post-11583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-civilians","tag-gaza","tag-gaza-humanitarian-crisis","tag-israel-hamas-war","tag-palestine","tag-shifa-hospital"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}