Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “pushing for the discharge the hostages by decisive navy victory,” in line with a diplomatic supply quoted Sunday by Hebrew media,
The supply’s feedback got here as captives’ kinfolk slammed reported plans to broaden the preventing within the Gaza Strip and slammed Netanyahu for indicating, in a video assertion on harrowing footage of two hostages, that there was no ceasefire-hostage deal in sight.
In feedback carried by a number of retailers, the unnamed supply mentioned “an understanding is forming that Hamas is just not excited about a deal.”
Subsequently, the supply mentioned, “the prime minister is pushing for the discharge of hostages by decisive navy victory, mixed with the entry of humanitarian assist to areas exterior the fight zone, and, as a lot as potential, exterior of Hamas management.” The supply didn’t elaborate on how such a plan would work.
The supply was mentioned to have added that “Israel is involved with the Individuals,” whose particular envoy Steve Witkoff mentioned Saturday that Washington was aiming to finish the Gaza conflict slightly than broaden it, and that the US was now not excited about partial hostage offers.
Based on Channel 12 information, because of the US pivot away from offers that will quickly pause the preventing in trade for less than among the hostages, Israel is ready to determine this week if it would broaden the preventing — even on the threat of harming hostages — or enable extra time for a possible deal.
Illustrative: IDF troopers are seen within the Gaza Strip in a handout photograph launched July 28, 2025. (Israel Protection Forces)
The community reported that Netanyahu and Protection Minister Israel Katz are undecided on the matter, whereas the remainder of the safety cupboard is split.
Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Nationwide Safety Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, Navy Secretary Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman, and Cupboard Secretary Yossi Fuchs had been mentioned to be in favor of increasing the conflict.
Alternatively, IDF Chief of Workers Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, International Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Shas chief Aryeh Deri, Nationwide Safety Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi and Mossad chief David Barnea reportedly oppose increasing the preventing, as do the Shin Wager’s negotiator, who is thought by the Hebrew preliminary “Mem,” and Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon, who’s overseeing the hostage file for the navy.
Hostage households decry plan to broaden preventing
In a video assertion Sunday night, Netanyahu mentioned propaganda footage of hostages Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski — clips from which the hostages’ households accepted for publication the previous two days — confirmed Hamas was bored with a hostage deal.
The footage, revealed respectively by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad final week, present the hostages to be pale and skeletal. David may very well be seen in an underground tunnel digging what he mentioned he feared was his grave.
Netanyahu mentioned the movies strengthened his resolve to conquer the fear group.
Nonetheless photographs of hostages Ram Braslavski (left) and Evyatar David from Hamas propaganda movies, cleared for publication by their households in August 2025. (Composite screenshot)
“I perceive precisely what Hamas needs,” he mentioned in a video launched by his workplace. “It doesn’t desire a deal. It needs to interrupt us — with these horrifying movies, with the false horror propaganda it spreads the world over.”
The premier mentioned he was “shocked” by “the horrifying movies” and spoke with the hostages’ households.
Apparently referring to the hand of a captor that may be seen within the video of David, Netanyahu mentioned that because the hostages “waste away in a dungeon… the Hamas monsters surrounding them — they’ve thick, fleshy arms. They’ve every little thing they should eat. They’re ravenous them the best way the Nazis starved the Jews.”
“However we is not going to break,” Netanyahu mentioned, including: “I’m full of even higher willpower to free our captive sons, to remove Hamas, and to make sure that Gaza won’t ever once more pose a menace to Israel.”
Following Netanyahu’s assertion, and in response to the Hebrew media studies about cupboard plans to broaden the preventing in Gaza, the Hostages and Lacking Households Discussion board mentioned the premier “is main Israel and the hostages to the abyss.”
Anti-government, pro-hostage deal protesters rally round a hearth in entrance of the Start Highway entrance to the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv, August 2, 2025. (Jack GUEZ / AFP)
“Netanyahu is making ready the best rip-off,” mentioned the Discussion board, which represents a majority of the households of the remaining 50 hostages. “The speak, which has been heard many times, about releasing the hostages by decisive victory, is a fraud.”
“For 22 months now the general public has been offered the phantasm that navy stress and intense preventing will deliver the hostages again,” mentioned the group. “Even earlier than the draft for a complete deal was written, we’re being informed there is no such thing as a feasibility for a deal.”
“The reality should be informed: Increasing the conflict endangers the lives of the hostages who’re vulnerable to imminent dying. We noticed the chilling photographs of the hostages within the tunnels, they gained’t survive extra lengthy days of horror,” the group mentioned, including that increasing the Gaza conflict “is a assure of the failure of the century.”
“There is no such thing as a victory nor any revival in it,” the group added.
‘Not one thing we didn’t know’
Regardless of Netanyahu’s professed shock on the state of David and Braslavski, Hebrew media reported that the cupboard and different safety boards had been repeatedly briefed in current weeks that the remaining hostages had been being starved.
Sources accustomed to the problem had been cited by the Ynet information web site as saying: “The visible was nonetheless devastating, nevertheless it’s not one thing we didn’t know.”
Hostage households and their supporters rally at Hostages Sq. in Tel Aviv on August 2, 2025. The display screen reveals, from proper to left, footage of hostage Evyatar David earlier than his abduction; in a propaganda video from February 2025; and in a propaganda video from July 2025. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
The safety institution was mentioned to have warned in a current closed assembly: “The hostages are struggling troublesome captivity situations. Their situations are deteriorating; their captors are ravenous them. This didn’t occur due to lack of entry to meals — the captors acquired orders to starve the hostages and provides them minimal meals, solely to maintain them alive.”
Braslavski and David are among the many 20 hostages nonetheless regarded as alive in Gaza. All are younger males kidnapped in the course of the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, when 1000’s of terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 folks and take 251 hostages.
Terror teams in Gaza are additionally holding the stays of at the least 28 hostages confirmed lifeless by the IDF, together with the physique of an IDF soldier killed preventing in Gaza in 2014. There are grave considerations for the well-being of two different hostages, Israeli officers have mentioned.
