On Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he was assurances by both President Biden and President-elect Donald Trump that he could resume military operations in Gaza after the first phase of the ceasefire deal if he chooses to do so.
Under the deal, Israel and Hamas will negotiate the second phase during the first phase, which began on Sunday and involves a 42-day ceasefire. “Both President Trump and President Biden have given full backing to Israel’s right to return to the fighting if Israel reaches the conclusion that the second stage negotiations are ineffectual. I greatly appreciate this,” Netanyahu said.
The Israeli prime minister said that Trump had described the ceasefire as a “temporary” one. “[Trump] welcomed the agreement and rightly emphasized that the first stage of the agreement is a temporary ceasefire. That is what he said, ‘a temporary ceasefire,'” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu said that Trump also agreed to “lift the remaining restrictions on providing vital weapons and munitions to the State of Israel. If we need to go back to the fighting, we will do so in new ways and with great force.”
Netanyahu has been under pressure from some members of his coalition government not to sign the ceasefire deal, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who quit the government on Sunday.
Netanyahu’s government still has a majority in the Knesset after Ben Gvir and his Jewish power party quit. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionism party, is also threatening to quit if Israel doesn’t resume its genocidal war in Gaza after the first phase.
Smotrich said that he was given assurances from Netanyahu that Israel would restart military operations to launch a “gradual takeover of the entire Gaza Strip.” He said Gaza was “ruined and disintegrated, uninhabitable” and that it would stay that way.
“Don’t be impressed by the forced joy of our enemy. This is an animalistic society that sanctifies death. Very soon, we will erase their smile again and replace it with cries of grief and the wails of those who were left with nothing,” Smotrich said.
