Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Sunday to “open the gates of hell” in Gaza if Hamas does not return all hostages, pointing to a joint US-Israeli strategy to take on the Palestinian militants.
“We have a common strategy, and we can’t always share the details of this strategy with the public, including when the gates of hell will be opened, as they surely will if all our hostages are not released until the last one,” Netanyahu said in a joint statement with visiting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“We will eliminate Hamas’s military capability and its political rule in Gaza,” the statement added. “We will bring all our hostages home, and we will ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel.
“The unequivocal support of the United States on Gaza will help us achieve these objectives faster and set us on a path for a different future,” Netanyahu said.
He added that he discussed with Rubio US President Donald Trump’s “bold vision for Gaza’s future and will work to ensure that vision becomes a reality”.
Trump recently suggested that the US take over the Gaza Strip and turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East”, while resettling the territory’s two million Palestinian residents in other countries, namely Egypt and Jordan.
The proposal has triggered global outrage. Rubio on Sunday acknowledged that Trump’s proposal for Gaza “may have shocked and surprised” many.
But he said “the president’s also been very bold about his view of what the future for Gaza should be, not the same tired ideas of the past, but something that’s bold and something that, frankly, took courage and vision.
“What cannot continue is the same cycle where we repeat over and over again and wind up in the exact same place,” Rubio said. “Hamas cannot continue as a military or a government force… they must be eliminated… it must be eradicated.”
He added that the first priority for Trump is that the hostages held in Gaza since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack “need to come home, they need to be released”.
