to the facts on the ground. and by the time that you and me are talking now, another child is being killed for nothing. what we ve seen in the last 2a hours is israel s prime minister come out and say this. israel has no intention of permanently occupying gaza or displacing its civilian population. israel is fighting hamas terrorists and not the palestinian population. he s never been that explicit about israel s complete disinterest in a reoccupation or displacement of the people of gaza. good morning, israel. good morning, benjamin netanyahu. this just shows you how important is the procedure in the hague, because if at least this makes the israeli prime minister and some israelis to think about what we are doing and maybe to restrain
welcome to hardtalk. thank you. it s such a pleasure to be back in hardtalk with you, stephen. well, it s a pleasure to have you on the show. let s begin with a very basic fact you are one of your own israeli government s fiercest critics. you have been for a long time. you ve certainly been an arch critic of the israeli military strategy in gaza. given all of that, i just wonder how you feel sitting in tel aviv watching the international court ofjustice consider the case of genocide filed against israel. i was watching it with a lot of sadness, depression and also a sense of shame, i must tell you. you know, my parents came here as refugees, really the ashes of the biggest genocide in history. and here, 80, 90 years later,
putting gaza in a cage. what did we think will grow there? what did we think, in this experiment in human beings, maybe the biggest experiment in human beings, will grow in a reality in which 2.3 million people are put being put in a cage, or in a prison? what can grow there? loving israel? pacifism? what can grow there? prosperity? what can grow there? so don t come now and ask what to do now. ask me 16 years ago what to do. the problem with that argument is that october 7th happened, the murderous assault on southern israel happened, and it changed the dynamic. the message that you ve been delivering for decades to israelis wasn t being heeded then. but the whole dynamic has shifted since. you actually visited kibbutz be eri, one of those kibbutz hardest hit by the hamas horrors. and you said, i ve never in my life seen
their name for what they did on october 7th is just the first. there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve and the capabilities. you re just saying, oh, you know what? we lljust ignore that. that s just rhetoric. we won t take that seriously. and, stephen, do you think if we continue now and kill another 20,000 people in gaza and destroy the left, the left of what s left in gaza, then this will not happen? you really think that we can avoid everything and prevent everything and retaliate it? no. there are limits to what we can do by power, by force. and we reached this point and now it s time to try something else. first of all, negotiation about the hostages. and, yes, we are facing a very complicated reality. i don t ever pretend in which in two minutes we will solve everything. but i know one thing. continuing this war will not solve anything, and more and more people realise it. so let s stop it for a while.
know how it goes on. and the beginning is very, very worrying because people were arrested for demonstrations. people. . .you say that we don t feel empathy. it s almost forbidden to express empathy with gaza. if you are an arab israeli citizen, don t you dare to feel empathy with gaza because then you will be really in trouble. if you arejewish. come on, gideon, you. you haven t been silenced. you re one of the most powerful voices on your newspaper. i say if you are arab israeli, and then i say if you are jewish, be also aware. i wasn t silenced in my newspaper, but i was silenced on israeli tv and in other places. and don t complain, i have full freedom. i really don t complain. but by the end of the day, the feeling is that paying empathy now with gaza is an act of treason, no less than this. i don t remember such a phenomena ever before, so this should worry