Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he’s prepared to “give peace a chance” — but “the way you purchase peace is through strength,” he told “CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil Tuesday in Tel Aviv.
Netanyahu spoke to CBS News days after Hamas released the last 20 living hostages taken on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s military withdrew from parts of the Gaza Strip, in the first phase of a peace plan brokered by President Trump and Arab states. He weighed in on the future of Gaza, how Israel will react if Hamas doesn’t disarm and the criticism Israel has faced during the war.
Here are the highlights:
Could Netanyahu regret releasing nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the Israeli hostages?
Netanyahu took a longer view when Dokoupil, in reference to the release of almost 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners in exchange for both the living and deceased Israeli hostages, asked him, “Are you going to regret this decision?”
He responded that now, Israel is in a “much better position” to pursue Hamas if it fails to abide by the peace plan because there are no longer 20 Israeli hostages “with their head on the chopping block.”
Dokoupil noted that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack, was released in an exchange with Israel in 2011.
Netanyahu acknowledged that the decision to release thousands of people — including 250 who were serving life sentences in Israeli prisons — was “very painful.”
“It’s true that the worst ones among them we didn’t release, but that’s small comfort if your son or daughter was murdered by one of these people who were freed,” he said.
Releasing the Palestinian prisoners came with the understanding that “there’s an enormous price to pay for the commitment that Israel has to bring our hostages or captives held by the enemy,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu claims ratio of civilians to combatants killed in Gaza is “less than 2 to 1”
Asked by Dokoupil about the criticism that he’s been “negligent with civilian life in Gaza” and whether his count of civilian deaths differed from that of the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, Netanyahu estimated “20,000 Hamas terrorists” had been killed by Israel.
He added that that was the number “if you take away the people who die anyway from disease or old age.”
Netanyahu argued, “Take away the double counting and so on, the ratio is less than 2 to 1, which is unbelievable in urban conflict.” It’s a figure he also cited at the United Nations General Assembly in September, telling world leaders, “The ratio of non-combatant to combatant casualties is less than 2 to 1 in Gaza.”
The Gaza Ministry of Health says nearly 70,000 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7, 2023. Its numbers do not differentiate between civilians and combatants. There are also an estimated 11,000 Gazans still missing, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, presumed to be buried beneath the rubble.
Mr. Trump told reporters Sunday that he believes roughly 60,000 people have died in Gaza.
Netanyahu says finishing war “as speedily as possible” is “first fix” to combat young Americans’ negative views of Israel
Netanyahu cited the war’s duration as one of the reasons that Americans’ have an increasingly negative view of Israel. A Pew poll in late September found only 35% of the respondents had a positive opinion of Israel’s government, down from 47% in 2022, before the war started. Among Americans under 30, only 13% said the U.S. was providing “about the right amount of aid to Israel.”
“The first fix is to finish the war as speedily as possible, something that I have sought to do against all this contrarian propaganda,” he said.
Netanyahu also blamed social media for fueling the outrage against Israel, saying that “lies” about the nation “obviously does its damage.”
“In the TikTok age and in the television age … letting wars go on too long is going to cost you precisely what it costs you.” But he added, “That can recover at least partly when you finish the war and you move on to what I hope will be the era of peace.”
Netanyahu on Trump saying he’s hard to work with: “I’m very tough”
In remarks to the Knesset on Monday, Mr. Trump said Netanyahu is “not the easiest guy to deal with, but that’s what makes him great.”
Netanyahu appeared to take pride in the characterization.
“I hope he says that, because I’m very tough on the matters that pertain to my country’s future,” he told Dokoupil. “My job is to protect the Jewish state and assure the future of the Jewish people.”
Netanyahu says Hamas must disarm or “all hell breaks loose”
“We agreed to give peace a chance,” Netanyahu said. But he also maintained that the conditions in Mr. Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza are “very clear:” Hamas must give up its arms and demilitarize, or “all hell breaks loose.”
Mr. Trump has warned that if Hamas does not disarm, “We will disarm them.”
“And it’ll happen quickly and perhaps violently,” the president said. “But they will disarm.”
Netanyahu told Dokoupil, “I hope we can do this peacefully. We’re certainly ready to do so.”
How will the Gaza Strip be governed?
A major unresolved question is who will control the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces withdraw.
Mr. Trump’s peace plan calls for control over the territory to be handed over to a technocratic committee made up of Palestinians, overseen by a “Board of Peace” that includes Mr. Trump and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Hamas is not supposed to play any role in governance. But beyond that, it’s unclear.
Netanyahu said the exact structure for how the territory will be run is unsettled.
Asked by Dokoupil if Blair would run Gaza himself, Netanyahu replied, “I doubt it.”
“But I think that this is a transitional period, and we want to fashion a governance that works, that is not made of people who are committed to our destruction,” he said. “We don’t want to have the October 7th massacre repeated.”
Netanyahu has ruled out the idea of allowing an independent Palestinian state, the solution that has been advocated by U.S. allies in Europe and the Arab world.
He told Dokoupil that he supports Palestinians having the power to govern themselves, but would not support a Palestinian state with “military power.” “That sovereign power of security must remain with Israel,” the prime minister continued.
The Israeli leader said the path forward should involve deradicalization and changes to the Palestinian education system. He also noted that many Gazans are opposed to Hamas or hold the group responsible for inflicting “horrific misery” on them.
“The most important thing in destroying fanaticism is to destroy a certain hope, the hope that the fanaticism will achieve its results,” Netanyahu said. “When people know Israel is here to stay, you’re not going to destroy the Jewish state, Israel is too strong, that prepares the ground for a change of heart.”
