Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has insinuated that Israeli allies have a short memory regarding Hamas’ 7 October attack.
Speaking at the start of a cabinet meeting, Netanyahu asked, “To our friends in the international community I say: is your memory so short?”
“So quickly you forgot about Oct. 7, the worst massacre committed against Jews since the Holocaust? So quickly you are ready to deny Israel the right to defend itself against the monsters of Hamas?”
Benjamin Netanyahu
Palestinian militant group, Hamas, launched a surprise attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking about 240 hostages into Gaza.
Netanyahu asserted that Israel would push on with its Gaza offensive, including in the city of Rafah, despite growing international pressure not to.
“We will operate in Rafah. This will take several weeks, and it will happen,” he said, without clarifying if he meant the assault would last for weeks or would begin in weeks.
Israel claims the city is one of the last strongholds of Hamas.
Officials in Israel have repeatedly said that destroying any remaining Hamas forces in Rafah is essential to achieving their war aims.
Any attack on Rafah is likely to cause more civilian casualties and worsen an already acute humanitarian crisis across Gaza.
Netanyahu’s office disclosed that the Israeli army was preparing “operational issues” and the evacuation of the civilian population from Rafah.
Rafah is the southernmost city in Gaza, where more than a million people displaced from elsewhere in the territory have sought shelter.
Moreover, Netanyahu responded to a call by Chuck Schumer, the U.S Senate leader and ally of President Joe Biden, for Israel to hold new elections.
The Israeli Prime Minister remarked that a pause in fighting to allow for elections to take place would paralyse the country for months.
“If we stop the war now, before all of its goals are achieved, this means that Israel will have lost the war, and this we will not allow. Therefore, we cannot, and will not, succumb to this pressure …
“No international pressure will stop us from realising all of the goals of the war: Eliminating Hamas, freeing all of our hostages and ensuring that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to Israel.”
Benjamin Netanyahu
Polls show that any election now would result in a loss of power for Netanyahu.
Rafah Assault To Make Regional Peace “Very Difficult”
Also on Sunday, German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, warned that an Israeli assault on Rafah would make regional peace “very difficult.”
This came after talks with Jordanian King Abdullah at his private residence in the Jordanian Red Sea port of Aqaba.
Scholz stated, “Right now, it is about ensuring we come to a long-lasting ceasefire. That would enable us to prevent such a ground offensive from taking place.”
He revealed that this is one of the main arguments that he will bring to talks with Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, later on Sunday during his trip to the region.
When asked if he was prepared to exert pressure on Netanyahu to stop such an assault, Scholz responded that it was “very clear we must do everything so the situation does not get worse than it already is.”
“Israel has every right to protect itself. At the same time, it cannot be that those in Gaza who fled to Rafah are directly threatened by whatever military actions and operations are undertaken there.”
Olaf Scholz
Separately, Scholz noted in a post on X that he wants to see a much larger amount of aid being delivered via land routes, a topic he said he would raise when speaking with Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
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