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Netanyahu: Hamas Has Said "No" to Every Ceasefire Deal
(Fox News) Peter Aitken - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday dismissed reports that negotiators were close to agreeing on a Gaza ceasefire deal. "There's a story, a narrative out there that there's a deal out there...that's just a false narrative," Netanyahu told Fox News. He stressed that Israel has agreed to several deals proposed by negotiators from the U.S., Egypt and Qatar, but that each time the deal lapsed because Hamas "has consistently said no to every one of them." "They don't agree to anything: Not to the Philadelphi Corridor, not to the keys of exchanging hostages for jailed terrorists....[They] just want us out of Gaza so they can retake Gaza and do as they vowed to do....The report that there's a deal out there, that the only thing holding it up is the Philadelphi Corridor, is not merely not true, it's just a direct falsehood." Keeping control of the Philadelphi Corridor "prevents Gaza from becoming this Iranian terror enclave again, which can threaten our existence, but it's also the way to prevent them from smuggling hostages that they keep through the ceasefire into Egypt, into the Sinai, where they could disappear, and then they'll end up in Iran or in Yemen, and they're lost forever. So if you want to release the hostages and you want to make sure that Gaza doesn't pose a threat to Israel again, you've got to keep the Philadelphi Corridor."