Israel won’t implement Gaza deal until all hostages returned, Netanyahu vows

Israel’s prime minister says that no concessions will be made until after all 48 remaining hostages are returned.

By World Israel News Staff

Israel has agreed to President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza, but will not begin implementing the plan or moving forward with concessions required under the deal until after all 48 of the remaining hostages held in the Gaza Strip are returned, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said over the weekend.

On Sunday, Netanyahu addressed a gathering of the Heroes Forum, a lobby group representing families of victims murdered during the October 7th invasion, as well as relatives of fallen IDF soldiers slain in the line of duty in Gaza since October 7th.

During his address to the Heroes Forum, which has taken a more hawkish position than the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Netanyahu said that Israel had agreed to the Trump plan on the condition that Hamas release all of the hostages before Israel moves to implement any of the other clauses of the agreement.

“We will not proceed to any of the 21 clauses until the first clause — the release of all the hostages, the living and the dead — until the very last hostage, all of them, have crossed into Israeli territory. Only then will we move on to any other clause,” Netanyahu told bereaved parents who lost children in Gaza or on October 7th.

Israel’s Defense Minister, Israel Katz (Likud), echoed Netanyahu’s comments, vowing to escalate Israeli attacks on Hamas positions in Gaza should the terror group fail to free the hostages.

“If Hamas refuses to release the hostages, the IDF will once again increase the intensity of its fire,” Katz said Sunday at a memorial ceremony honoring IDF soldiers killed during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

“The strength of the pressure exerted by Israel and the intensity of the IDF’s maneuver in Gaza City are the reasons for the possible shift in Hamas’s position and in that of the countries that support it, which now fear its collapse.”