Israel
Netanyahu credits himself with securing hostages’ release amid reports of early elections
Taking a leaf out of the Trump playbook, he also took potshots at journalists and analysis who doubted him
October 10, 2025 11:30
Taking a leaf out of the Trump playbook, he also took potshots at journalists and analysis who doubted him
October 10, 2025 11:30Benjamin Netanyahu has delivered a defiant speech crediting himself, along with Donald Trump, with securing the release of the hostages seized on October 7, despite being told repeatedly it would not be possible to get everyone home without submitting to Hamas’s demand for the IDF to withdraw completely from Gaza.
Speaking in Hebrew in a televised address today, Israel’s Prime Minister also thanked the country’s “great friend”, US President Donald Trump – whose fevered campaign for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize ended in disappointment this morning.
Speaking to the country the day after his government approved a deal to release all the remaining hostages and to end the war in Gaza, Netanyahu declared: “I believed that if we applied heavy military pressure, combined with heavy diplomatic pressure, we would absolutely be able to return all of our hostages. And that is exactly what we did.”
Earlier today, it was reported that the prime minister was laying the groundwork to hold early elections in Israel, capitalising on the wave of public optimism surrounding the Gaza deal to bolster his chances. A senior Likud source, who was not named, told Israeli newspaper Maariv that preparations were already underway.
Netanyahu recently contacted Likud Central Committee chairman and welfare minister Haim Katz, asking him to convene the party’s central body to approve holding snap leadership primaries in the coming weeks, according to Maariv.
Legislative elections in Israel are scheduled to take place by 27 October 2026.
Taking a leaf out of Trump’s playbook, Netanyahu in his speech took aim at analysts and journalists who claimed, as he put it, “that there is no way to bring back the rest of the hostages without giving in to Hamas’s main demand – that the IDF will leave the Strip entirely, including from the buffer zone, including from the Philadelphi corridor, including from the dominant ground, with all its implications.”
He said he knew that “massive diplomatic pressure” from “our great friend President Trump", combined with Israel’s “massive military pressure”, would force Hamas to return all of the hostages while the IDF remained inside the Gaza Strip.
Promising that “Hamas will be disarmed, and Gaza will be demilitarised”, he implied a return to war should things go awry: “If this is achieved the easy way, great. And if not, it will be achieved the hard way,” he said.
Meanwhile, Trump, who could not be accused of downplaying his role in securing what he suggested could be the beginning of “eternal peace” in the Middle East, learnt that his enthusiastic pursuit of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize had ended in failure.
Instead, the Nobel Committee announced the winner as Venezuela’s opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, for her "tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela" and "her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy".
Responding to the announcement, the White House's communications director Steven Cheung said the "Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace". Writing on X, he said Trump "will continue making peace deals, ending wars, and saving lives".
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