JERUSALEM: Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz warned Wednesday that if Hamas fails to release Israeli hostages by Saturday, the country would resume its war and US President Donald Trump’s vision for the US to take over Gaza would become a reality.
“The new Gaza war will be different in intensity from the one before the ceasefire, and it will not end without the defeat of Hamas and the release of all the hostages,” Katz said.
“It will also allow the realisation of US President (Donald) Trump’s vision for Gaza,” Katz said, referring to Trump’s plan for the US to take over the Palestinian territory and relocate its inhabitants to Egypt and Jordan.
A fragile ceasefire reached last month between Hamas and Israel appeared strained on Wednesday, with the Palestinian group saying it would not bow down to threats from Israel and the United States.
Mediators in Qatar and Egypt were pushing to salvage the ceasefire agreement, a Palestinian source and a diplomat familiar with the talks told AFP earlier in the day, while Hamas said its top negotiator was in Cairo.
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On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “if Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday noon, the ceasefire will end, and the IDF (Israeli military) will resume intense fighting until Hamas is decisively defeated”.
His statement came after Trump warned that “all hell” would break loose if every Israeli hostage is not released from Gaza within the coming days.
Katz, in a video statement on Wednesday, said that he has been holding security consultations with the army’s operations command centre to “ensure that the IDF (army) is properly prepared for the renewal of the war in Gaza”.
“If Hamas halts the release of the hostages, then there is no agreement, and there will be war,” he said.
The Gaza war was triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the deadliest in Israel’s history, and which resulted in the deaths of 1,211 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Hamas also took 251 hostages, of whom 73 remain in Gaza, including 35 that Israeli officials say are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 48,222 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN considers the figures reliable.
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