Netanyahu vows to respond with a different kind of force to any firing on Gaza border
In a speech hours after the truce took effect on Friday, he said, “if Hamas thinks we will tolerate a drizzle of rockets, it is wrong.” He vowed to respond with “a new level of force against any expression of aggression against communities around Gaza and any other part of Israel.”
He said Israel's latest operation in Gaza has succeeded in severely harming Hamas and Jihad by killing about 200 militants and destroying 100 km of tunnels in Gaza.
According to Netanyahu, the Gaza campaign achieved it goals of inflicting a severe blow on Hamas. “The public and Hamas don’t know everything, but the totality of our achievement will be revealed over time,” he said. “When we together launched the operation, I defined its central goal – to inflict a hard blow on the terror organizations and restore quiet on the basis of deterrence.
“At this stage I can say that we undertook daring and innovative acts without engaging in needless adventures,” he said. “If I thought that we needed to carry out a ground incursion, I would have done it, but I thought that we could achieve results in better ways.”
Israel and Hamas agreed to an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire on Thursday, following extensive international efforts to end the heaviest flare-up since the 2014 Gaza War.
The truce went into effect on Friday at 2 A.M.
Fighting between Israel and Hamas escalated over the past week and a half, killing at least 243 people in the Gaza Strip and 12 in Israel, in one of the deadliest exchanges in years.
