Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel Will Do ‘Whatever Necessary’ To Silence Hamas

Benjamin Netanyahu promised Sunday that Israel will do whatever is required to stop Hamas from attacking his country in its ongoing attempt to kill Israeli citizens.

Taking to U.S. Sunday Morning news shows as hardcore fighting between Israel and Hamas continued to explode, Netanyahu said on Fox News Sunday that his country would do “whatever is necessary” to achieve their goal of stopping the Islamic terrorist group from continuing to attack Israel.

“Hamas has broken five cease-fires,” said Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister. “They’ve violated their own cease-fires. They are firing on us now. … We’ll do whatever is necessary to achieve our goal of a sustained quiet.”

Israel’s late Saturday offer of a 24-hour truce was promptly rejected by Hamas who instead fired off more rockets into Israel. Resuming its offensive, Israel went back to trying to locate and destroy the Hamas rocket launchers, along with the Hamas cross-border attack tunnels.

Only then did Hamas offer its willingness to honor a 24-hour “humanitarian truce” for the Eid al-Fitr holiday to celebrate the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, underlining Netanyahu’s frustrations with any type of negotiations with Hamas.

Finally, a Hamas spokesman assured the cease-fire would begin at 2 p.m. local time Sunday, which is 7 a.m. Eastern U.S. Time. But no sooner had 2 p.m passed than Israelis were again running for bomb shelters as three more Hamas rockets were lobbed into Israel.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Sunday morning interviews took place shortly following the on-again, off-again, cease-fires and broken truces, perhaps stoking Netanyahu’s emotions as the fighting, which Israel had offered to stop, instead continued.

“The (Israeli) military is aiming its fire at terror sites, but if citizens are accidentally harmed Hamas is responsible for this since it once again violated an offer for a humanitarian lull that Israel accepted,” read a statement from Netanyahu’s office.

Along with Fox, Netanyahu also appeared on CBS, NBC, and CNN, a “sustainable quiet” being a theme Netanyahu continued to reiterate, according to Haaretz.

“Imagine that 75 percent of the U.S. population is under rocket fire and they have to be in bomb shelters within 60 to 90 seconds,” offered Netanyahu on CNN’s State of the Union. “You can’t live like that. So I think we have to bring back, restore back a reasonable, sustained quiet and security. And we will take whatever action is necessary to achieve that.”

Again addressing the devastating civilian casualties in Gaza, Netanyahu responded:

“We’re sad for every civilian casualty. They’re not intended. This is the difference between us. The Hamas deliberately targets civilians and deliberately hides behind civilians,” said Netanyahu. “All civilian casualties are unintended by us, but intended by Hamas. They want to pile up as many civilian dead as they can, because … they use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause.”

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