Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Friday that a truce under way with Hamas in Gaza was a “short pause,” after which Israel would resume operating with full military force.
Yoav Gallant © Mena Today
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Friday that a truce under way with Hamas in Gaza was a “short pause,” after which Israel would resume operating with full military force.
Gallant made the remarks to his Italian counterpart who was on a visit to Tel Aviv, according to his office. He spoke as Israel prepared to receive 13 hostages set to be freed from Gaza, in return for the release of 39 Palestinian prisoners.
“There will be a short pause and then we will continue operating with full military power. We will not stop until we achieve our goals: the destruction of Hamas and bringing home the hostages from Gaza to Israel – there are 240 hostages and it is something we cannot accept and cannot tolerate,” Gallant said.
Israel and Hamas started a four-day ceasefire on Friday with the militants set to release 13 Israeli women and child hostages later in the day and aid to flow into the besieged Gaza enclave, the first pause in the near seven-week-old war.
The truce began at 7 a.m. (0500 GMT), involving a comprehensive ceasefire in north and south Gaza, and was to be followed by the release of some of the more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack inside Israel, mediators in Qatar said. A number of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons were to be freed in exchange.
Fighting raged on in the hours leading up to the truce, with officials inside the Hamas-ruled enclave saying a hospital in Gaza City was among the targets bombed. Both sides have signaled the pause would be temporary before fighting resumes.
Israel killed a commander of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in an airstrike on southern Lebanon on Friday, further testing a ceasefire that halted last year's war between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah group.
Turkey wants no confrontation with Israel in Syria after repeated Israeli attacks on military sites there undermined the new government's ability to deter threats, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told Reuters on Friday.
Israeli troops moved into an area of northern Gaza to expand what they call a security zone around the edge of the enclave, the military said on Friday, days after the government announced plans to seize large areas with an operation in the south.
To make this website run properly and to improve your experience, we use cookies. For more detailed information, please check our Cookie Policy.
Necessary cookies enable core functionality. The website cannot function properly without these cookies, and can only be disabled by changing your browser preferences.