Orit Strook: We can't limit our vision to the hostages

National Missions Minister Orit Strook said in an interview to Kann last night (Tuesday/Wednesday) that Israel cannot limit its view to the hostages alone when considering the hostage deal.

Strook said that "we must not have a field of vision which only sees" the hostages, as "a hostage deal all at once contradicts" the government's war aims.

"I very much understand all the hostage families, who see only the hostages, but not all hostage families are like that. As decision-makers, we need to have a complete field of view," she explained. "Every decision needs to see the entire spectrum. Also the hostages, also what Hamas is preparing for us now after we withdrew from the Netzarim corridor, and also the rivers of blood that will still flow here because of hundreds and thousands of arch-murderers and arch-terrorists that we are releasing in the country and around the world."

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Strook then explained the difference between "pauses" in the fighting to release as many as possible and a deal that permanently ends the war: "A hostage deal all at once and a permanent ceasefire contradict the war objectives. This is the opinion of the government and the opinion of any reasonable person. The State of Israel has no option but to eliminate Hamas and remove it completely from Gaza. We can make stops and pauses, and then we can ask what price we pay for them. The possibility of a permanent ceasefire is not on the table."

She also rejected common arguments that the government needs to accept any hostage deal due to their failure to stop October 7 by saying: "I don't accept this entire ethos, this entire worldview of 'you are responsible.' October 7 happened, among other things, because of irresponsible actions like the Shalit deal. The Shalit deal was made by the Prime Minister, and it's on his hands, so should we do such a thing again? I think that on October 7, we paid the blood price for what previous governments did, and we must not create deals that lead to such a blood price."