Netanyahu doubles down on rejecting Gaza cease-fire until hostages are released after Biden call

Netanyahu doubles down on rejecting Gaza cease-fire until hostages are released after Biden call

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – after having a call with President Biden on Monday – doubled down on rejecting any cease-fire in Gaza unless hostages are released.

In an interview with ABC News' David Muir, Netanyahu described Biden as a "good friend," but conflicted with the White House's support for a "humanitarian pause" in Gaza. 

"We agree that we need to provide humanitarian assistance, we’re doing it and coordinating it with our American friends and with President Biden," Netanyahu said. "We’ll do whatever we can. We don’t want to give Hamas the opportunity to endanger our soldiers. We saw that until we started the ground action, there was no pressure on them to release hostages. What we see if the minute we started the ground action, there is pressure."  

"The President himself has said that a cease-fire would be a surrender to Hamas, would be a victory for Hamas and you would no more have it than you would have a cease-fire after the Al-Qaeda bombings of the World Trade Center," Netanyahu continued. "There will be no cease-fire, no general cease-fire, in Gaza without the release of our hostages. As far as tactical, little pauses, an hour here, an hour there, we’ve had them before. I suppose we’ll check the circumstances in order to enable good, humanitarian goods to come in or our hostages, individual hostages to leave, but I don’t think there’s going to be a general cease-fire."

"It’ll hamper our effort to get our hostages out because the only thing that works on these criminals, on Hamas is the military pressure that we’re exerting," he continued.