Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that “there is no substitute for total victory” over Hamas at a memorial ceremony on Thursday, even as CIA Director Bill Burns attempts to broker a ceasefire.
“Hamas came to uproot us — we will uproot them,” Netanyahu told Israel Defense Forces soldiers at a base that Hamas overran on Oct. 7, 2023. “On Tu B’Shvat, here, next to the Gaza Strip, I say as clearly as possible: There is no alternative to deepening our roots, and there is no substitute for total victory over our enemies.”
Netanyahu planted a tree in “the blood and sorrow-soaked ground” of the Reim base and renewed his commitment to “eliminating Hamas and returning all of our hostages.” There is tension between those goals, as Hamas has insisted publicly that Israel must abandon its military campaign as a condition for the release of the roughly 130 hostages who remain in the custody of the terrorist organization.
“It continues to be a priority for us, and we’ll continue to work at it, in close coordination across the interagency, as well as with our partners in Israel,” U.S. State Department principal deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said Thursday.
Patel declined to provide “any updates … on that line of work,” but Burns is expected to meet this weekend with his Israeli and Egyptian counterparts, as well as with Qatari Prime Minister Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani to try to broker a breakthrough. The preparations for the meeting were first reported by the Washington Post.
“They’re still finalizing details,” a source familiar with the preparations for the meetings told the Washington Examiner. “It could [get] canceled at the last minute, but this is the plan.”
Qatar has a long-standing relationship with Hamas, which has maintained a political office in Doha since 2012. Israeli national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi described the Qataris as an essential party to such discussions in October 2023. Netanyahu criticized the Qatari government as a problematic one during a meeting with the families of the remaining hostages earlier this week — and his remarks were leaked, to the dismay of the civilians.
“All conversations that take place in meetings with the Prime Minister are recorded by his office and his associates present at the meeting,” Hostages and Missing Families spokesman Haim Rubinstein told the Jerusalem Post. “The decision whether to leak information concerning the deal and its intermediaries is the Prime Minister’s office.”
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Netanyahu’s team has denied signing off on the publication of a broadcast about his comments, which could have been blocked under Israeli censorship laws.
“It is puzzling to me,” former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen told an Israeli outlet on Thursday. “When I was present in discussions in the first days [of the war], I recommended maintaining our relationship with Qatar to the fullest extent possible. … My real worry is that if we don’t do that, we will reach a crisis too large to overcome … Qatar would escape from the negotiating table, and we would be left without effective mediating.”
