The first thing that the Jewish state must do is to defeat Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a delegation of retired U.S. Jewish military leaders at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv last week.
“People who do this thing to us are not going to be there. We have a long battle,” he told the delegation from the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security of America. “I don’t think it’s that long, but we’ll get rid of them.”
Netanyahu added that “Iran is fighting us on a seven-front war: Obviously, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, the militias in Iraq and Syria, Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, Iran itself.
“They’d like to topple Jordan. Their goal is to have a combined ground offensive from various fronts, coupled with a combined missile bombardment,” he said.
Netanyahu added that Israel must “deter the other elements of the Iran terror axis.
“But we have to deal with the axis. The axis doesn’t threaten only us. It threatens you,” he said. “It’s on the march to conquer the Middle East. Conquer the Middle East. Conquer. That means, actually, conquer. Conquer Saudi Arabia, conquer the Arabian Peninsula. It’s just a question of time.”