We Have To Bring Back All Hostages, Make Sure Hamas Is Destroyed: Israeli Ambassador To India

New Delhi:  Israel remains completely focused on bringing back its hostages and completely destroying Palestinian terror outfit Hamas so that it can no longer constitute a military threat in future or form a government in Gaza, Reuven Azar, the Ambassador of Israel to India, told IANS in an exclusive interview on Wednesday.

“We have managed to bring back most of our hostages. We are left now with about 69 hostages. Of which, about half of them are dead. We have managed to bring almost 190 hostages back and we are trying to be persistent on the goal that our cabinet has determined,” said Azar.

“We have to bring back all our hostages and also make sure that Hamas is destroyed and can no longer constitute a military threat nor be the government in Gaza… Because, we know that if Hamas comes back to become the government in Gaza, the time frame until we will have another 7th of October will shorten. Therefore, we are very stubborn in achieving both goals,” he added.

Since the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas began on January 19, the terror outfit has released 25 Israeli hostages in much-publicised handovers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that the release of Palestinian prisoners would be delayed until Hamas ceases its “humiliating ceremonies” during the release of Israeli hostages under the ceasefire deal.

Reflecting on the developments since deadly assault carried out by Hamas on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 which resulted in around 1,200 deaths and the taking of 250 hostages, the Israeli Ambassador to India lauded the work done by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the decisive actions taken by the government back home.

“We have not only withstood, managed to not only survive, but also succeed in giving a decisive answer to the attack that happened to us on the 7th of October… Not just what Hamas did to us, which was atrocious, but in the context of what the entire Iranian proxies have tried to do against Israel. So we have managed to remove from Israel a very significant threat of hundreds of thousands of rockets that were coming from Hezbollah. Capabilities that were being built in Syria, were being built in Iran against us,” said Azar.

Both the IDF and the Israel Security Agency (ISA) Shin Bet have been reiterating that Israel will continue to pursue all of the terrorists responsible for the October 7 massacre and will operate against anyone who threatens the country.

“The fact that we have succeeded in this military operation, that there’s no longer a military machine of Hamas that is capable of threatening all the centers of population in Israel. The fact that Hezbollah is no longer a threat to northern Israel in a significant way and that Iran got hit very severely in very strategic points of their missile programme is very significant because when those enemies that have sworn to destroy us are debilitated, this gives peace and stability a chance. We have a window of opportunity now, a combination of the Israeli military victories and the coming of the Trump administration to do many good things for the region,” Azar mentioned.

(IANS)