Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met today (Monday) with the Yamam police special forces unit, thanking them for their work and celebrating the successful rescue of two hostages as a turning point in the war.
Gallant said that a reversal had occurred in Israel in its thinking about Hamas: "Hamas is vulnerable, Hamas is penetrable...the public understands they have someone they can trust."
Even more importantly, "(the operation) put air in the lungs of the Israeli public, for something which is very important, the most important thing for very many people and justifiably, of the whole Israeli people."
He did qualify the applicability of rescue operations: "We have hostages and we need to get to them...most of them we will not reach in this way, most of them we will bring, I hope, through processes of agreement."
Nevertheless, he did not close the door on future rescue efforts: "But how often we'll yet need this and in what circumstances, who knows."
Gallant finished by saying Israel needs to restore deterrence, and that the lasting image of the war needs to be a ruined Gaza both above and underground, not the destruction done in the Gaza Perimeter on October 7.