April 21 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, warned this Sunday that, in the coming days, he will increase “military and diplomatic” pressure on Hamas and promised that his country will deal “new and painful blows” to the militias of the Palestinian Islamist movement.
In a message issued before Passover, Netanyahu declared that “the absence” of the hostages kidnapped by Palestinian militias “will only strengthen the country's determination to recover them.”
As he has been doing in recent weeks, the prime minister has placed the responsibility exclusively on Hamas for the current failure of the negotiations for the release of the hostages.
“They have directly rejected everything we have proposed,” the prime minister said. “And, instead of abandoning his extremist stance, Hamas continues to try to sow division between us.”
“Given the situation, we are going to deal new and painful blows. And it will happen very soon,” Netanyahu has warned while the Israeli Army has been preparing for weeks a large-scale operation in Rafah, southern Gaza, home to hundreds of thousands displaced Palestinians.
