Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US television personality Dr. Phil, in an interview which aired on Thursday, that he hopes that he and US President Joe Biden can overcome their disagreements over the Gaza war.
"I’ve known Joe Biden for many years, 40 years and more. We often had our agreements but we've had our disagreements. We've been able to overcome them. I hope we can overcome them now, but we will do what we have to do to protect our country," Netanyahu said.
At the same time, the Prime Minister stressed that Israel will fight alone if it has to.
“When people are telling us don't go into Rafah…they're telling us to leave them intact and then the thing repeats itself again and again, so I think right-minded people, rational minded people, understand that we don't have a choice.”
“I've said in the Holocaust Memorial service that we had the other day [that] in the Holocaust we stood alone, but we were defenseless. And today, if Israel has to stand alone, we'll stand alone, but we also know we're not alone because we have so many decent people everywhere who do support us, who do understand the truth, and we will defeat our enemies and we will secure our future,” said Netanyahu.
Asked what he says to those who characterize Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7 as “resistance”, the Prime Minister replied, “Hamas openly declares its goal to wipe out everything you see around here, to kill every man, woman and child in Israel, to destroy the state. That's not resistance. That's naked. brutal aggression. That's their doctrine.”
“Iran is saying the same thing: ‘Our goal is to destroy Israel’. We're the ‘small Satan’. By the way, their goal is to destroy you. You are the ‘big Satan’. We're just standing in their way and they're right. We're not merely protecting ourselves, we are, but in so doing we're protecting all of free civilization, all of Western culture. They want to erase it,” Netanyahu added.
On his vision for the day after the war in Gaza, Netanyahu said, “I think we'll have to assure continuous demilitarization because, even if you destroy the terrorist army, you can have individual terrorists left. We have to uh root them out constantly.”
“We'll probably have to have some kind of civilian government, civilian administration, by Gazans who are not committed to our destruction, possibly, I think, with the aid of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and other countries that I think want to see stability and peace,” he added.
“But we're going to have Israel continually root out terrorists because I don't see anyone coming in to do that right now…I'd love to see that but I don't see it, so we'll continue to take action against the remnants of the terrorist army,” the Prime Minister stressed.