Posted by: John Phoenix
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US President Joe Biden on Thursday that Tel Aviv will not end the war on the Gaza Strip before achieving all its goals.
This came during a phone call Biden made with Netanyahu, according to the private Hebrew Channel 12, the day after Tel Aviv received Hamas’s response to the prisoner exchange proposal and ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
The channel said, “Netanyahu told Biden, during their phone conversation on Thursday, that Tel Aviv will not end the war on the Gaza Strip before achieving all its goals.”
On more than one occasion, Netanyahu set three goals for the war on the Strip: eliminating Hamas, releasing Israeli detainees in Gaza, and ensuring that Gaza does not pose a threat to Israel’s security, but none of these have been achieved despite the passage of nearly 9 months.
The two sides’ talk came after the same channel reported earlier on Thursday, citing an unnamed Israeli political source, that Netanyahu had agreed to send the negotiating delegation regarding the prisoner exchange proposal talks with Hamas, without specifying the host country for the talks, which usually take place in Doha or Cairo.
On Wednesday, Israel announced that it had received, through Egyptian and Qatari mediators, Hamas’ response to the truce proposal, while the two parties did not disclose the content of the movement’s response. However, Hebrew media outlets quoted Israeli sources on Thursday as saying that the response is a suitable basis for resuming negotiations.
On Thursday morning, the families of Israeli prisoners in Gaza threatened to organize “million-man” demonstrations if the Netanyahu government foiled a prisoner exchange deal that was beginning to loom on the horizon with the Palestinian factions in the Strip.
With the mediation of Qatar, Egypt, and the United States, which provides absolute support to Tel Aviv, the Palestinian factions in Gaza and Israel have been conducting indirect, faltering negotiations for months to reach an agreement to exchange prisoners and stop the war on Gaza.
Since October 7, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza with full American support, leaving more than 125,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing amid massive destruction and famine that has claimed the lives of dozens of children.
Tel Aviv continues the war, ignoring the UN Security Council resolutions to stop it immediately, and the International Court of Justice orders to take measures to prevent acts of genocide and improve the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.