Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday morning dismissed reports that negotiators were close to agreeing a cease-fire deal.
‘It’s exactly inaccurate,’ Netanyahu told ‘Fox & Friends’ co-host Brian Kilmeade during an interview. ‘There’s a story, a narrative out there that there’s a deal out there … that’s just a false narrative.’
Netanyahu stressed that Israel has agreed to several deals proposed by the negotiators from the U.S., Egypt and Qatar, but that each time the deal lapsed because Hamas ‘has consistently said no to every one of them.’
‘They don’t agree to anything: Not to the Philadelphi Corridor, not to the keys of exchanging hostages for jailed terrorists, not to anything,’ Netanyahu said, adding that the terrorist group ‘just want us out of Gaza so they can retake Gaza and do as they vowed to do.’
Netanyahu made headlines last week when The Times of Israel reported that the prime minister told Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that he prioritized an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) presence along the 7.8 mile long Philadelphi Corridor over saving the lives of the remaining hostages in Gaza.
The IDF over the weekend recovered the bodies of six hostages who were killed by Hamas terrorists.
Netanyahu lamented the ‘horrible’ condition of the bodies and detailed his visit to the families of the victims, whom he said were ‘broken’ by the news.
‘We have worked so hard to get them out,’ Netanyahu insisted. ‘I made a deal a few months ago where we got more than half of our hostages out and more than half of the living hostages. And we’re doing everything we can to get the remainder.’
‘But Hamas consistently refuses to make a deal, so it’s not, you know, the report that there’s a deal out there that the only thing holding it up is the Philadelphia tunnel is not merely not true, it’s just a direct falsehood,’ Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu maintains that the best way to ensure the return of the remaining roughly 100 hostages – over half of whom are believed to still be alive – relies on keeping control of the Philadelphi Corridor.
‘It prevents Gaza from becoming this Iranian terror enclave again, which can threaten our existence, but it’s also the way to prevent them from smuggling hostages that they keep through the cease-fire into Egypt, into the Sinai, where they could disappear, and then they’ll end up in Iran or in Yemen, and they’re lost forever,’ Netanyahu argued.
‘So if you want to release the hostages and you want to make sure that Gaza doesn’t pose a threat to Israel again, you’ve got to keep the Philadelphia corridor … and that’s what we’re really doing right now.’