National Security Council head Tzachi Hanegbi held a press conference Saturday evening following the "Iron Swords" war. During his remarks, Hanegbi was confronted with a quote about a week before the attack in which he claimed that Hamas was "restrained and deterred for another 15 years." In response, the head of the National Security Council replied: "We were wrong."
"I'll start with personal words. We are a strong and robust nation. The Jewish state has suffered an unbearable blow, thousands of broken and weeping families are devoured by worry and pain. Even within my office, the female soldier who works lost her husband. I know that this time too, we will do what is required of us to go into battle and win it. This is what the public expects from Henge. We see the percentage of the company's volunteering, even when the tears are falling, its readiness for sacrifice has not dissipated," Hanegbi said at the beginning of his remarks.
National Security Council head Hanegbi enters the press conference, photo: Coco
In the framework of journalists' questions, Hanegbi was confronted with a quote of his, when he claimed about a week before the war that "for more than two years there has been no deliberate fire from Gaza. Hamas is very, very restrained and understands the significance of the defiance. He is deterred for another 15 years."
In response to the quote, the head of the National Security Council said: "First of all, this is my mistake, and it reflects the mistake of all the assessment sources for many years, but even more so in the recent period when we did believe that Hamas learned the lesson of the Guardian of the Walls, in which it was dealt a determined blow. We have also seen expression of this mistake in three operations that the IDF had no choice but to initiate after Islamic Jihad challenged us – the black belt, the dawn of dawn and again recently the shield and arrow.
"We were forced to behead the entire leadership of the jihad, they cried out to Hamas to save them and Hamas decided not to enter the battle. That's one of the reasons we thought they understood. I didn't get any warning from Egyptian intelligence. That night, two and a half hours earlier, various indications arrived, both the Shin Bet and the army assessed that this was not what we all suffered. The issues will become clear. There will be no sovereign ruler in Gaza after the battle. It's an ambitious goal that hasn't been set."
IDF forces on the Gaza border // Photo: Shmuel Buchris
Regarding possible negotiations with Hamas, Hanegbi said, "I can't say that there are negotiations, because it is impossible to negotiate with an enemy that we want to erase." "We are committed to the captives and missing persons. We must first try to understand the most basic fact: where are the children, the sons, the girls, the parents. We try to do this in combat conditions, while the enemy is doing evil manipulation, which in itself is a war crime."
Regarding the northern threat, he said, "Our goal is not to get sucked into a two-front campaign, so we defined focusing on the south as our main goal. There wasn't a single day when there wasn't an attempt to kill Israelis from the north. We conveyed messages publicly, and I think they were received. We have learned to be humble in assessing the enemy that there can be a phenomenon of deception, we have seen this in the south. Therefore, the Prime Minister decided to mobilize the reserve forces on the largest possible scale. We hope that Hezbollah will not destroy Lebanon because there will be nothing less than that if they attack from there."
The mortar fire towards Har Dov, earlier today, Photo: Eyal Margolin - Genie
The head of the National Security Council confirmed that the number of abductees was between 150 and 200. "There are quite a few things we heard in the media and we tried to find out if it represented one activity or another. Such as the catheters. We are committed to the POWs and the missing try to do it in combat conditions while the enemy viciously manipulates. We've been used to it for nine years. They don't volunteer information. We are committed to this issue. We sent people to the battlefield and the envelope, and we certainly won't give up until we can bring up what happened to them and try as much as possible to bring them back."
On the possibility of Hezbollah joining the fighting: "We have learned to be humble in assessing the enemy. Hundreds of thousands of reservists have been mobilized in order to be prepared for any possibility and scenario, including the launch of a campaign in the north."
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