Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that the next phase of Israel's peace plan for the Gaza Strip will be the disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza, not its reconstruction.
Speaking in parliament shortly after the news of the return of the last Israeli hostage from the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu declared that his government had fulfilled its moral and ethical mission to return all hostages, both alive and dead. He noted that 168 of the 255 hostages kidnapped by Palestinian radicals were returned alive.
"We have returned all our hostages, alive and dead, to Israel, and today, the last one of them.
We are at the beginning of the next stage. The next stage is the disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, not reconstruction. We are interested in advancing this phase, not delaying it, and we will do it.
The sooner we disarm Hamas and demilitarize the Gaza Strip, the sooner we will achieve the goals of the war," Netanyahu said, according to a statement from his office.
