Netanyahu insists any hostage deal must allow Israel to resume fighting

Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that any deal to free the Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza must allow Israel to resume fighting afterwards and achieve all its war goals.

Talks to reach a deal to release the hostages and end the war have been deadlocked for months. However, they are due to resume this week after Hamas made what a senior US official said last week was “a pretty significant adjustment” to its position that had created an “opening”.

However, the Israeli prime minister has reiterated that he would not agree to any deal that did not allow Israel to achieve its war goals. At the beginning of the war, his government said this meant both freeing the hostages and destroying Hamas’s military and governing capabilities.

Netanyahu also insisted that any deal must prevent both the smuggling of weapons from Egypt into Gaza, and the return of militants to the north of the coastal enclave.

“The plan . . . will allow Israel to return hostages without infringing on the other objectives of the war,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.

Previous rounds of talks have repeatedly foundered on disagreements over a permanent ceasefire. Hamas has sought guarantees that any deal would end the war, while Israel has refused to agree to a lasting cessation until it had destroyed Hamas as a military force.

The US and the other mediators believe a deal to release the roughly 120 hostages still in Gaza is the most realistic way to end the war and de-escalate regional tensions, in particular the almost daily cross-border fire between Israel and Hizbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant movement.

Israel’s military said Hizbollah had fired about 20 rockets at the Lower Galilee region on Sunday morning, with Israeli paramedics reporting that one man was taken to hospital after being seriously injured by shrapnel.

It said later Hizbollah had also launched four anti-tank missiles at Israel, and that the Israeli military had responded with strikes on targets in Lebanon.

Israel launched its assault on Gaza after Hamas’s October 7 attack, during which militants killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostage, according to Israeli officials.

However, it has come under increasing international pressure over the toll of its offensive, which has killed more than 38,000 people, according to Palestinian officials, and fuelled a humanitarian catastrophe in the coastal enclave.

On Saturday, an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in central Gaza killed at least 16 people and wounded dozens, local officials said.

Israel’s military said the strike in Nuseirat had targeted militants who were using structures in the area of the Al-Jaouni school as a “hide-out and operational infrastructure” to direct and carry out attacks on its forces, adding that it had taken steps to reduce the risk of harming civilians before the strike.

The Palestinian health ministry said that, in addition to the deaths, 50 people had been injured, and accused Israeli forces of committing a “massacre”.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, said nearly 2,000 displaced people had been sheltering in the school. It had been run by the agency before the war.

He said 190 UNRWA facilities had now been hit since the start of the war, resulting in the deaths of 520 people and 1,600 injuries.

“Too many were women and children. A reoccurring claim (among others) from Israel is that our facilities are being used by Palestinian armed groups. These are claims that I take very seriously,” he said. “It is exactly why I have repeatedly called for independent investigations to ascertain the facts and identify those responsible for attacks on UN premises or their misuse.”