Netanyahu threatens to cancel ceasefire at last moment

If Israel resumes fighting, it will do so with “great power,” the prime minister has warned

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to scuttle an impending ceasefire with Hamas if the Palestinian militant group does not provide a list of the Israeli hostages it will release in the first phase of the truce.

Israel and Hamas agreed on Wednesday to end their 15-month conflict in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of over 1,700 Israelis and almost 47,000 Palestinians. The three-phase deal – which in its first stage will see Hamas trade 33 hostages for an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners – is set to take effect on Sunday, after it was approved by Netanyahu’s cabinet in the early hours of Saturday morning.

In a statement on Saturday evening, however, Netanyahu claimed that Hamas had reneged on a promise to provide the Israeli authorities with the names of the hostages to be released the following day.

“We will be unable to move forward with the framework until we receive the list of the hostages who will be released, as was agreed,” he said. “Israel will not tolerate violations of the agreement. Hamas is solely responsible.”

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The Israeli prime minister went on to describe the ceasefire as “temporary,” declaring that Israel will return to fighting if the subsequent stages of the deal are not reached. Should the war resume, Netanyahu said that Israeli forces will strike Gaza “in new ways and with very great power.”

Netanyahu presented the ceasefire as a victory for Israel, saying that securing the release of the hostages was one of the core goals of the war. However, relatives of the captives have been critical of the Israeli leader, and have accused him of torpedoing previous ceasefire proposals to please his hardline coalition partners.

One of these hardliners, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, has threatened to pull his Jewish Power party out of Netanyahu’s coalition over the deal. Speaking to Channel 12 news on Saturday night, Ben-Gvir said that he would resign from the government on Sunday, but that he would not try to topple the coalition.

In a statement on Saturday, Hamas said that Israel “failed to achieve its aggressive goals” in Gaza. Israeli forces, Hamas added, “succeeded only in committing war crimes that shame humanity.”