Jerusalem, 5 October, 2025 (TPS-IL) — Affirming that Hamas “will be disarmed” during the implementation of Phase II of the Trump Plan for Gaza and that the strip “will be demilitarised”, Prime Minister Netanyahu delivered a clear message tonight. It was directed at all parties but especially at Hamas which attempted through its response to the plan to turn this critical issue for Israel into a gray area.
Speaking to the press, the PM bluntly said that disarmament and demilitarisation “will happen through the political path according to the Trump plan, or through the military path — but it will happen”
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“We are on the brink of a very significant achievement,” Netanyahu stated, quickly cautioning however that it was not yet finalised. He added that Jerusalem was working on it vigorously, as he put it. The achievement, as implied by the Prime Minister, would be that ‘during the first stage, Hamas will release all of our hostages, and IDF forces will redeploy in such a way that the IDF will continue to hold all of the territories it controls deep inside the Gaza Strip’.
Slamming “some people” who as he said are suggesting today, “that Hamas was ready a year ago, or even two years ago, to release all our hostages without us fully withdrawing from the Strip”, the PM called the accusation a lie, underling that the change in Hamas’s position was brought solely by the military and diplomatic pressure Israel had exerted.
“Thanks to the great support that I received from you, citizens of Israel, and thanks to the bravery of our fighters, I stood up to tremendous pressure from within and without to stop the war and surrender to Hamas’s dictates”, said Netanyahu, reminding of the all the things Israel achieved in this two years and that Israel would have left Gaza with almost no achievement” had he accepted a compromise then.
“We would not have entered Rafah and taken control of the Philadelphi Corridor, thereby stopping all possibility of smuggling weapons into the Strip. We would not have eliminated Haniyeh, Sinwar, Deif, and Nasrallah. We would not have brought about the collapse of the Assad regime and the breaking of the Iranian axis of evil, and above all – we would not have removed the existential threat of nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles from Iran”, the PM stressed.
Although he avoided sounding triumphant at any stage, it was clear that this was a highly confident Netanyahu. Even the very fact that his statement was short showed that he felt that he no longer needed to defend his strategy, a strategy that had been questioned repeatedly over the past two years.
And to send the message that once Israel frees all the hostages the war will effectively become a victory.
He also gave the stigma of that strategy by underlining that he has “never given up on the remaining hostages” while at the same time has “also never given up on achieving the other objectives of the war”.
The PM was full of praise for the US President which he called “my friend, our friend”. He reminded that a few weeks ago he directed the IDF “to enter Hamas’ most important stronghold: Gaza City”. Adding that at the same time, he “coordinated with President Trump and his team a political move that turned the tables in an instant. Instead of Israel being isolated, Hamas is isolated. And as a result of the intense military pressure we exerted, and the political pressure, Hamas was pressured to agree to the plan we presented”.
“I instructed the negotiating team to go to Egypt to finalise the technical details of the release of the hostages”, said the Prime Minister, making clear that his intention and that of the United States “is to limit the negotiations to a few days”.
“I hope that, with God’s help, in the coming days, even during the Sukkot holiday, we will be able to announce the return of all the hostages — the living and the slain, in one go, with the IDF still deployed deep in Gaza,” he said. Sukkot, a week-long festival starts on Monday evening.
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