Israel on Thursday firmly rejected a Hamas demand to permanently halt fighting before releasing any more hostages being held by terrorists in Gaza, as talks in Cairo for a truce deal appeared to make little progress.

A Hamas official told AFP that “a total ceasefire and a retreat of the Israeli occupation army from the Gaza Strip are a precondition for any serious negotiation” on a hostage-prisoner swap.

Israel has repeatedly rejected any such proposition, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated on Thursday the longstanding position in no uncertain terms: “We are fighting until victory. We will not stop the war until we achieve all its goals — completing the destruction of Hamas, and releasing all of our hostages.”

Netanyahu added that he was giving Hamas a “very simple choice: surrender or die. They do not have and will not have any other option.”

He added that “after we destroy Hamas, I will work with all my power to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel” — an apparent indication that he does not intend to step down or publicly take responsibility for the failures that enabled Hamas’s October 7 massacres.

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