American journalist Dan Senor hosted Israeli Minister Ron Dermer on his podcast and discussed why Israel does not stop fighting and then return to fighting Hamas soon—assuming the terrorist organization would violate any agreement reached with it.
"There are many who argue: Just end this thing. Get the hostages back. Get all of them back. Declare an end to the war. There will be some kind of ceasefire and Hamas will violate it, and then Israel will have the opportunity to go back in and finish off Hamas," Senor stated.
Minister Dermer responded and sought to explain what the reality would actually look like and how it would challenge Israel. "What's going to be the opportunity? They're gonna violate, what are they gonna do?" When Senor suggested Hamas would fire rockets at Israel, Dermer responded: "Let's say they don't fire rockets. Let's say they use the opportunity of not having Israeli troops in Gaza, because that’s their demand to end the war, to justre-arm."
"So you're telling me that we'll catch them smuggling in one, and then we'll mobilize all the Israeli reserves to go off and finish off Hamas because of that, and the international community is just going to sort of accept it?" he wondered.
He reminded Senor of the international response to Hamas’s murderous attack on October 7, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. "Let’s think about what actually happened on October 7th. 1,200 Jews were murdered on October 7th, people were beheaded, babies were burned, women were raped. Where was the international community after October 7th, when the hostages were in there? How much support did we have and how long did it last? Two weeks? Three weeks? Four weeks? So now you're working on the assumption that you're just simply gonna walk out, you're gonna leave all the Israeli troops out, there's gonna be some kind of minor violation, because it won’t come all of a sudden one day, and if they’re smart, they won’t fire a missile for five years, they'll just build up their capacities again. Now, when we go back, we're going to have to start from scratch to go back?"
"Now, let me ask you something. If you lose another 200 soldiers going back, does it make sense? If you lose 400 soldiers, does it make sense? These are decisions that a Prime Minister actually has to make," Dermer concluded.