Minister Eli Cohen believes that Israel will ultimately be the party that will be required to disarm the Hamas terrorist organization.
“Either Hamas disarms itself-which will not happen-or an international force acts against Hamas-but I doubt they will do so. We have to give it a chance, but it’s clear to me that we will have to do it. I think we will do it by force, because Hamas will not lay down its weapons-and only we are capable of doing so,” Cohen said in an interview with Kan Reshet Bet.
Addressing progress in the Gaza ceasefire agreement, the minister said: “For us, Phase A will be completed only when Israeli hero Ran Gvili returns to Israel. His return is a mandatory condition for moving on to Phase B. There are quite a few activities taking place behind the scenes to bring him back.”
According to Cohen, there is also a connection between dealing with violations of the Gaza agreement and the gas deal with Egypt: “There are cases where we have seen violations, and therefore there are discussions on this issue. We have also used, among other things, the issue of the gas deal to act to stop the violations and ensure that they do not happen again in the future.”