Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Hamas to give up its arms, exclaiming that the hundreds of its combatants who had surrendered in Gaza and who had been arrested marked the start of the terror group’s demise.
“The war is still ongoing but it is the beginning of the end of Hamas,” Netanyahu said as he urged the terrorist group’s fighters not to sacrifice themselves for their leader Yahya Sinwar.
“I say to the Hamas terrorists: It’s over. Don’t die for Sinwar. Surrender – now!”
“In the past few days, dozens of Hamas terrorists have surrendered to our forces. They are laying down their weapons and turning themselves in to our heroic soldiers.” Netanyahu said.
He issued his statement as violence on the northern border heated up and amid strong calls for a humanitarian ceasefire to the Gaza war, including from Russia and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Netanyahu spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin for close to 50 minutes on Sunday, in which he explained the necessity of the IDF’s continued Gaza campaign.
Speculation remained that the US wanted to see the campaign wrapped up by January despite its insistence that there was no timeline for such action.
Up to Israel to set the timeline for the war
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN on Sunday that it was up to Israel to set the timeline for the war. “Everyone wants to see this campaign come to a close as quickly as possible,” he said.
“But any country faced with what Israel is facing: a terrorist organization [Hamas] that attacked it in the most horrific way possible on October 7 – and as I said, has said repeatedly that it would do it again and again and again – has to get to the point where it is confident that this can’t be repeated,” Blinken said.
Still, the secretary of state stressed, it was important for Israel to maintain a low casualty count in the enclave as it worked to oust Hamas and to ensure the entry into Gaza of humanitarian aid.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the Doha Forum virtually that his country “strongly condemned” the October 7 attack that sparked the Gaza war, in which Hamas killed over 1,200 people and seized some 250 hostages.
But, “It’s not acceptable to use this event for collective punishment of millions of Palestinian people with indiscriminate shelling of the civilian quarters,” Lavrov stated as he called for a ceasefire.
Hamas has asserted that some 17,000 Palestinians have been killed in violence related to the Gaza war. Israel has said that some 7,000 Hamas terrorists are among those fatalities.
Lavrov pointed to the UN Security Council’s attempt to pass a resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire on Friday, which the US vetoed, explaining that it should have passed and that Washington had erred in blocking it. Russia was one of the 13 countries out of the UNSC’s 15 members that supported the resolution.
“The Americans are very good at cancel culture. When they don’t like some part of history or events, they just cancel what preceded it,” Lavrov said. But it’s important to remember what the roots of the conflict were, as he blamed Israel for events going back to its 1948 War of Independence.
There is a reason that Palestinians in Gaza feel victimized, the foreign minister said.
“The single most dangerous factor igniting extremism in the Middle East is the unsolved nature of the Palestinian state,” he said.
Lavrov did not respond when pressed as to whether he was hypocritical about his criticism of Israel given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “That’s up to you to judge,” he told the reporter who interviewed him from the Doha Forum stage.
Putin, in his conversation with Netanyahu, said it was essential “to avoid such grave consequences for the civilian population while countering terrorist threats” in Gaza, according to a statement from the Kremlin. “Russia is ready to provide all possible assistance to alleviate the suffering of civilians and de-escalate the conflict,” he told Netanyahu according to the Kremlin.
At the Doha Forum, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres swore that he would continue to work for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
“I promise I will not give up,” he said. Guterres has prompted the UNSC vote on a ceasefire resolution by invoking a rare mechanism last used in 1989 called Article 99.
The UNSC’s failure to pass a ceasefire resolution, “severely undermines” its credibility, he said.
“There is no effective protection of civilians in Gaza” and the number of civilian casualties in such a short time is “unprecedented,” Guterres stated.
Netanyahu in his talk with Putin expressed his “displeasure” with Russia’s support of the United Nations Security Council for a ceasefire resolution that did not involve a condemnation of Hamas’s October 7 attack.
“Any country that would suffer a criminal terrorist attack such as Israel experienced would act with [with an operation of] no less force than the one in which Israel operates,” Netanyahu told Putin.
The prime minister thanked Putin for Russia’s efforts toward last month’s hostage deal that saw the release of 105 hostages from Gaza. There are still 137 hostages in captivity there.
“Israel would use all means, both political and military, to release all of our abductees,” he told the Russian president.
Netanyahu also asked Putin to pressure the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit the captives in Gaza.
Separately, in a statement to his government on Sunday, Netanyahu lauded the Biden administration for its support of Israel both in Washington and at the UN, including sending Israel needed military supplies for the war.
“An additional shipment of important ammunition for continuing the war will arrive today; in effect, it is already here,” he said.
“I thank President [Joe] Biden, who I spoke with on Friday about both the US taking the correct and just stand in the UN Security Council and – of course – the material assistance that the US is providing to the IDF,” he said.
Netanyahu noted that he had also spoken over the weekend with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, as well as with other international leaders.
“I told them that it is impossible to support the elimination of Hamas on the one hand, while on the other pressing us to end the war, which would prevent the elimination of Hamas.
“I think that in this fight, justice is on our side – and unity as well. When we are united as a people and a state, no force can prevent us from doing the right thing,” he said.
Netanyahu also focused Sunday on the Iranian threat, raising the matter in his conversation with Putin as he criticized Moscow’s “dangerous cooperation” with Tehran.
The two men spoke as the Iranian-backed Houthis kept up their threat against global shipping routes in the Red Sea in response to the Gaza war.
A Houthi military spokesperson said all ships sailing to Israeli ports are banned from the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea until Gaza receives all the food and medicine it needs.
Blinken told CNN that the Houthis represented a threat to global shipping.
“This should be and is an international concern,” he said.
“We are bringing together a group that we’ve already formed and we’re trying to strengthen its work to, on a maritime basis, help protect shipping,” he said.
“We’ve obviously taken action, including sanctions just this week, against those who are trying to finance the Houthis and their efforts,” Blinken said: “and we’ll take whatever other actions are necessary to protect our personnel and to protect our people, as well as to protect shipping.”
Reuters contributed to this report.