TEL AVIV: Families of hostages taken by Hamas have heckled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he addressed parliament, vowing to bring the captives home but saying “more time” was needed, AFP reports.
“Now! Now!” the families chanted when Netanyahu said Israeli forces needed “more time” to increase military pressure on Hamas.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel will not succeed in freeing the remaining hostages held in Gaza without military pressure, Reuters reports.
“We wouldn’t have succeeded up until now to release more than 100 hostages without military pressure,” Netanyahu said during a speech in Israel’s parliament. “And we won’t succeed at releasing all the hostages without military pressure.”
Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Gaza war was far from over and dismissed what he cast as false media speculation that his government might call a halt to fighting against the Palestinian enclave’s Hamas.
“We are not stopping. We are continuing to fight, and we will be intensifying the fighting in the coming days, and the fighting will take long and it is not close to concluding,” he told lawmakers from his Likud party, according to a statement.
