‘’What we have is a great military achievement and a great diplomatic achievement,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday as he commented to the media the achievements of Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza.
Speaking alongside Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon and IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, Netanyahu said Hamas had been “hit hard” and listed the military achievements including eradication of terror tunnels, destruction of command centres, rocket launchers and around 1,000 Hamas terrorists killed including senior leaders.
Yaalon concurred that Hamas “were dealt a serious blow.”
Netanyahu declared : ‘’The goal was to strike hard at Hamas and the terrorist organizations and in so doing bring prolonged quiet to all Israeli citizens. I can say that Hamas was indeed hit very hard. First of all, we destroyed the network of attack tunnels that it built over the years. I would like to make it clear that we introduced the ground force for this goal. When the mission was completed, when the IDF reported to us that this mission had been completed, we pulled the force back in order to deny Hamas the possibility of killing our soldiers or abducting them, goals that it very much aspired to.’
Netanyahu also emphasised that Hamas had “received none of the conditions it had demanded in return for a ceasefire.”
Under Tuesday’s opend-ended ceasefire deal most of Hamas’s core demands have been deferred to further talks scheduled to take place within a month. These include construction of a sea and airport, opening of borders with Egypt and Israel, the release of prisoners, and payments of salaries to Hamas employees in the Gaza Strip.
Although he conceded that it is “too early to tell” whether there will be “long term calm,” Netanyahu also focused on the diplomatic achievements of the past several weeks.
He said it is “no small thing” that the international community had not intervened with Israel’s military operation.
‘’I think that Hamas is also isolated diplomatically. We received international legitimacy from the global community,’’ he said.
Hamas’s isolation, especially in the Arab world signalled “a change, he said. ‘’We didn’t see this in the past.”
Since the launch of Operation Protective Edge, said Netanyahu, there had been a “reorganisation” of forces in the Middle East, which offered a “possible diplomatic horizon for Israel that holds within it new possibilities for our state.”
Similarly to comments he made last week, Netanyahu emphasized that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has a potentially significant role to play in the regional configuration, saying “We hope he will continue to seek peace with Israel,” adding “We would be happy if Abbas’s forces would enter Gaza.”