Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the demands from him and US President Donald Trump are "very clear" that Hamas must disarm and demilitarize or "all hell breaks loose," in a Tuesday interview with CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil.
"We agreed to give peace a chance," he said, commenting that now that the 20 remaining living hostages have been returned, disarmament and demilitarization must come next.
"First, Hamas has to give up its arms, and second, you want to make sure that there are no weapons factories inside Gaza. There's no smuggling of weapons into Gaza. That's demilitarization," the prime minister said.
Trump issues similar warning earlier on Tuesday
Hamas terrorists rejected the demand to disarm and demilitarize, which led to Trump issuing a warning that if the terror group does not disarm then "we will disarm them, and it'll happen quickly and perhaps violently, but they will disarm."
Netanyahu told CBS that he heard Trump's comments, and paraphrased them as "all hell breaks loose."
"I hope it doesn't, I hope we can do this peacefully. We are certainly ready to do so," Netanyahu commented.
An Israeli diplomat told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that while phase one included the return of all hostages, phase two generally aims to demilitarize Gaza and preliminarily establish a temporary Palestinian government.
Since the 20 living hostages were released, Hamas terrorists transferred the bodies of eight deceased hostages, including Guy Illouz, Bipin Joshi, Yossi Sharabi, and Daniel Peretz on Monday night, followed by four as-yet unidentified hostage remains on Tuesday night.
Netanyahu met with recently freed hostages Avinatan Or, Alon Ohel, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, Evytar David, and Eitan Mor at Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus, with his wife, Sara Netanyahu, where he told them he kept his promise to bring them back to Israel.
"I promised to bring them home - and we brought them home,” he said of the hostages who were freed after two years in Hamas captivity. “With the same determination, we are working on the return of the fallen. We will spare no effort or resources to bring them back."