Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied Saturday that US President Donald Trump had strong-armed him into agreeing to the current ceasefire and hostage release deal, and stressed that the war in Gaza “will end for good when the terms of the agreement that were accepted are implemented.”
“We are insisting that the agreement be implemented in its entirety,” including the return of all the dead hostages and Hamas’s disarmament, he said in an appearance on the staunchly pro-Netanyahu Channel 14.
He also confirmed that he would be running again for office in the next elections, currently scheduled for October 2026, and said he was confident that he would win. Opinion polls other than those conducted by Channel 14 have overwhelmingly and consistently predicted that Netanyahu’s current bloc of right-wing and religious parties won’t win a Knesset majority.
The premier has given dozens of interviews to foreign media outlets and podcasts since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught that started the war. He has given few interviews to Israeli media outlets, almost all of which have been with Channel 14.
Saturday’s appearance discussed a range of topics, from his relationship with the current US administration and its predecessor to the Gaza war and Iran — but largely skipped issues less comfortable to Netanyahu such as the failures that led to the October 7 attack, or right-wing criticisms of the current ceasefire deal.
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Netanyahu repeated his stance that if Hamas doesn’t agree to disarm, in accordance with the later stages of Trump’s 20-point peace plan, this will be done “the hard way.”
Only after Hamas is disarmed and Gaza demilitarized, “then the war will end,” he said.
Asked about the truce deal, Netanyahu denied that Trump had forced him into agreeing to it, and played up his own role in creating the US president’s 20-point plan for peace.
“He did not force this deal on me, because I worked together with him on its wording,” said the premier, adding that he had made significant changes to it right up until the last minute.
US President Donald Trump talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Knesset, October 13, 2025. (Chip Somodevilla/Pool via AP)
He said that even while he was in New York for the UN General Assembly, he was working to make some “very favorable changes for the State of Israel.”
He declined, however, to elaborate on what any of his apparent changes to the language of the agreement were.
“Trump said that there had never been such close coordination between an American president and an Israeli prime minister, and he is correct,” Netanyahu told the studio, to wild applause.
The premier appeared to dodge a question about whether the botched Israeli strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar had created any tension with the US, which maintains close ties with Doha.
Netanyahu also used the opportunity to discuss Washington’s involvement in Israel’s 12-day war with Iran back in June, when it assisted by striking key nuclear facilities that Israel did not have the capabilities to reach.
He said that he had approached Trump with a seven-page outline detailing the threat that Iran posed to Israel, as, according to him, “it was a matter of months until Iran would reach one nuclear bomb, maybe two, maybe more.”
“I knew we had to act to remove this threat as quickly as possible,” he said.
He said that he had informed Trump that Israel would launch its war against Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities, regardless of whether Washington approved.
Still, he said, he had one request for Trump, which was for the US to “penetrate the depths of Fordo [the remote, hard-to-reach Iranian nuclear facility] with the special means that only the US has.”
“He understood me and agreed to it,” Netanyahu said.
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