 [IsraelTimes] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he would accept a pause in the war in Gaza, speaking in his first interview since the ceasefire in Lebanon. “I am ready for a ceasefire in the south when we think we can achieve the release of the hostages,” he says to the rightwing Channel 14. “I am ready for a ceasefire at any time.”
At the same, he stresses that he will not accept an end to the war, a core Hamas demand. Without going into details, Netanyahu says Israel is doing “many many things” to try to reach a deal.
Now that there is a ceasefire in Lebanon and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is dead, the conditions have significantly improved for a hostage deal with Hamas, he argues.
“Hamas hoped that Iran would come to save it, it did not happen; it hoped that the Houthis would come to save it – it did not happen,” he says, “but above all it hoped that Hezbollah would come to save it, and indeed Nasrallah said on the second day when he attacked, ‘We will continue until Israel stops its attacks on Hamas.’ There is no Hezbollah [at Hamas’s side now]. That’s why I think the conditions have changed very much for the better, not only because of the separation of the theaters but also because of the… elimination of Sinwar.”
He says the conditions in Lebanon are different than in Gaza: Israel is trying to destroy Hamas, whereas in Lebanon at this stage it is working to prevent Hezbollah from rearming. While Israel can prevent arms smuggling in Lebanon by bombing border crossings and striking in Syria, that can’t happen in Gaza, because Israel won’t attack Egypt. Therefore, Israel has to remain on the Philadelphi corridor, the road on the Egypt-Gaza border, he insinuates.
Netanyahu says that he accepted a ceasefire in Lebanon because “we achieved exactly what we intended to achieve.”
Netanyahu says he ordered IDF to prepare for ‘intensive war’ if Hezbollah breaks ceasefire
[IsraelTimes] In his first interview since the ceasefire in Lebanon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that if Hezbollah doesn’t adhere to the rules, there will be “intensive war.”
“I gave the IDF instructions,” says Netanyahu, speaking to the right-wing Channel 14, “if there is a massive violation of the agreement, not only will we operate surgically like we are doing now, and with force, every time. I said, if there is a massive violation of the agreement, I instructed the IDF to prepare for an intensive war.”
Netanyahu was gathering advisors tonight for a meeting on the continuation of the war on its various fronts, Channel 13 reports.
To Channel 14’s Yaakov Bardugo, Netanyahu says the ceasefire in Lebanon “can be short,” and that Israel “enforced it on its first day.”
Asked why Israel is not creating a buffer zone in southern Lebanon, Netanyahu notes that the “threat of a ground invasion has been removed.”
He says that the IDF destroyed the aboveground infrastructure on the border, and the underground bunkers and tunnels.
Residents of the north “will return in stages, when they feel that what I’m saying is correct.”
On Iran’s nuclear program, Netanyahu will not promise that Iran won’t attain a nuclear weapon, instead saying “I will do everything so that Iran won’t be nuclear.” 
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