Netanyahu: Israel will disarm Hamas and demilitarize Gaza if foreign troops don’t

PM, defense minister, army chief vow powerful responses to ceasefire violations; Turkey again accuses Israel of genocide

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Thursday that Hamas will be disarmed and the Gaza Strip demilitarized, asserting that if the international community doesn’t do it, then Israel will.

Netanyahu’s comments came even as the US continues to lead efforts to put together a force that will be both willing to see through the disarmament mission and be acceptable to Israel, which continues to insist on excluding Turkey, which is keen to participate.

Israel “has more work” to do in Gaza, Netanyahu said, speaking at an Israel Defense Forces cadets’ graduation ceremony at the Bahad 1 officers’ school in southern Israel.

“At the end of the day, Hamas will be disarmed and Gaza will be demilitarized,” he promised. “If foreign troops do it, great. If they don’t do it, we will.”

Violations of the US-brokered ceasefire that halted the war in Gaza will be met with “powerful attacks,” he said of the truce, which has at times unraveled only to be stitched back together amid strong pressure from Washington that it hold up. A second stage of the US plan, dealing with the longer-term future of Gaza, calls for Hamas to disarm and the territory to be demilitarized, under the supervision of an international military force.

His remarks came amid ongoing Hamas violations of the current ceasefire and Israel’s response Tuesday, during which it carried out strikes across the Gaza Strip after a cell of Palestinian terror operatives killed a reservist soldier in the Rafah area.

In addition, Israel accuses Hamas of dragging its feet over returning the remains of 13 hostages it is holding and which it committed to hand back under the ceasefire. The terror group handed back two more bodies on Thursday, and Israeli authorities were working to identify them.

“If Hamas continues to explicitly violate the ceasefire, it will suffer powerful attacks like it did two days ago and yesterday,” Netanyahu threatened. “We decide, and we are acting whenever necessary to remove immediate threats from our forces.”

“We decide, and we act,” he stressed, amid criticism that the US restrictions have led to underwhelming responses to deadly Hamas attacks on IDF troops.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir also warned that the military is ready to return to fight on any front, and will use “much greater force” than it had in the past two years of war.

“We will show no patience toward any threat that emerges. We will believe an enemy that declares its intention to harm us, and we will destroy it,” said Zamir at the ceremony.

“There will be no tolerance when the safety of Israeli citizens is threatened. This is a principle I intend to uphold. We are operating in all arenas even now, with high readiness for as broad a campaign as required. In some arenas, we will again act with much greater force than we have during the past two years,” Zamir said.

Defense Minister Israel Katz told the ceremony that “many challenges still lie ahead” until the goals of the war are achieved.

“The intensive fighting in the Gaza Strip is expected, indeed, to end, but many challenges still lie ahead of us on several fronts, and we will not cease to act until we achieve them,” he said.

“We will not stop until we realize the overarching goals we set before us: the demilitarization of Gaza and the dismantling of Hamas’s weapons, along with the complete destruction of the terror tunnels,” Katz said.

Katz said Israel will “insist on full implementation of the agreement, and will not stop until we return home, for burial in Israel, all the remaining fallen hostages, including commanders and soldiers.”

Even though the first phase of the plan has not been completed, the US has been moving forward with efforts to create an international force that would oversee Hamas disarmament.

A key disagreement revolves around the participation of Turkish forces.

NATO member Turkey, one of the most vocal critics of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, joined the ceasefire negotiations as a mediator after largely indirect involvement. Its increased role followed a meeting last month between President Tayyip Erdogan and Trump at the White House. Ankara is hoping to participate in the international peacekeeping mission currently being put together, a move the US is said to be keen on.

Israel has been clear that it opposes any involvement by Turkey and Erdogan, who has repeatedly compared Israel throughout the war to Nazi Germany, repeatedly accused it of genocide, and embraced the Hamas terror group as freedom fighters.

Erdogan continued his lashing of Israel on Thursday as he slammed Germany over what he said was its ignorance of Israel’s “genocide,” famine, and attacks in Hamas-ruled Gaza, at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Ankara.

Erdogan said Israel has nuclear and other weapons that it was using and threatening Gaza with, adding that Palestinian terrorist group Hamas — which he is a longtime supporter of — has none of those. He said Israel had once again attacked Gaza in recent days despite the ceasefire in the enclave, without mentioning that the strikes followed the attack by terror operatives that killed an IDF soldier.

“Does Germany not see these?” Erdogan said, adding it’s Turkey, Germany, and other countries’ humanitarian duty to end what he claims are famine and massacres in Gaza.

Merz, however, said Germany would continue to stand with Israel and laid the blame on Hamas.

“Israel exercised its right to self-defense, and it would have taken only one decision to avoid countless unnecessary casualties. Hamas should have released the hostages earlier and laid down its arms, then this war would have ended immediately,” Merz said.

The comments came as the Trump administration is pushing for Turkey’s inclusion in the multinational security force to be deployed in postwar Gaza despite the Israeli objections, with a US official telling the Axios news site, “The Turks were very helpful in getting the Gaza deal, and [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s bashing Turkey has been very counterproductive.”

“We are aware of the Israeli concerns and are working to create something that can achieve stability and that both sides can find acceptable,” the official added.

Highlighting the opposition to the Turkish participation, officials said that a Turkish disaster response team was still waiting by the Gaza border for Israeli approval to enter the Palestinian territory to help with search and rescue operations.

The 81-member team from the AFAD disaster management left for the Gaza border just over a week ago with specialized search-and-rescue tools, including life-detection devices and trained search dogs, a Turkish defense ministry source said Thursday.

But they have not got Israel’s permission to enter.

The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas led an invasion of southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, and during which terrorists abducted 251 people who were taken as hostages to Gaza. All but the last 13 deceased hostages have since been returned.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 66,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.