Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back Saturday on growing calls from world leaders to avoid a ground operation in Rafah, saying doing so would mean losing the war against Hamas.

“Those who want to prevent us from operating in Rafah are essentially telling us: ‘Lose the war.’ I won’t let that happen,” he vowed at an evening press conference in Jerusalem. “We won’t capitulate to any pressure.”

Rafah, which sits on the Gaza-Egypt border, is the last remaining Hamas stronghold in the enclave, but it is also where over a million displaced Palestinians have fled to seek shelter from fighting elsewhere.

The US and several of Israel’s Western allies have warned Jerusalem that an offensive in Rafah in the current conditions would be catastrophic. Israel, which has said it will draw up a plan for civilians to evacuate before it enters, believes it cannot effectively curtail Hamas without taking Rafah, which sits on Gaza’s border with Egypt. At least some of the 134 hostages remaining in Gaza are thought to be in the city. Hamas leadership is also believed to be sheltering there.

Netanyahu said at the press conference that he’d told US President Joe Biden that Israel will fight until “total victory — and yes, that includes action in Rafah.” But the IDF operation in Gaza’s southernmost city, he stressed, will “obviously” come only after civilians there have an opportunity “to evacuate to safe areas.”

In response to a question from The Times of Israel on whether there had been plans to enter Gaza’s southernmost city earlier, at the beginning of the ground offensive, and, if so, why that step had not been taken then, Netanyahu expanded on the government’s efforts to cope with the refugees in Rafah.

“I won’t get into our plans,” the premier responded, but “there is a lot of space north of Rafah” to evacuate the civilians sheltering there. “There will be space for evacuation.

“We have to do this in an orderly fashion — and that’s the instruction I’ve given to the IDF.”

Netanyahu acknowledged international pressure not to operate in Rafah but wondered how the international community could expect Israel “to leave a quarter of Hamas’s [organized fighting] force intact, in a defined territory. We won’t allow that.”

Netanyahu emphasized that everyone in the government would like to strike another hostage deal. “I also want it”  and it would be “very good” if this could be achieved, he said. But he said that a new hostage deal with Hamas “does not appear very close” given the terror group’s exorbitant demands.

But even if a hostage deal is reached, he stressed, Israel will eventually enter Rafah. “There is no alternative to total victory. And there is no way to achieve total victory without destroying those battalions in Rafah, and we will do so.”

Netanyahu denied sidelining war cabinet minister Benny Gantz and observer Gadi Eisenkot in decisions regarding the hostage talks, as was alleged in media reports, when he decided, without consulting the pair, not to send an Israeli negotiation team back to Cairo for further talks.

He said the war cabinet had previously agreed to rebuff Hamas’s “delusional” demands, which included “demands regarding the Temple Mount, demands to end the war and leave Hamas intact, demands to withdraw from Gaza, demands to free thousands of murderers.”

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