Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu taunted Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as he compared him to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and accused him of hiding in a bunker while his people suffered.
“Sinwar doesn't care about his people and acts like a little Hitler in a bunker,” Netanyahu told reporters in Tel Aviv.
“His people," the Palestinians in Gaza, “are not interesting to him,” the prime minister stated.
He spoke on the day after Defense Minister Yoav Gallant pledged that the IDF would kill Sinwar during its ground campaign in Gaza.
Hamas, an Iranian proxy group, infiltrated southern Israel on October 7, killing over 1,400 people and taking over 240 of them hostage. It was a move that sparked Operation Swords of Iron in which Israel has vowed to oust Hamas from the coastal enclave.
Ali Khamenei meets with Hamas's Haniyeh
Amid fears of a regional war, Iranian state media reported that the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has met with Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Iranian state media said Haniyeh, who has resided between Qatar and Turkey since 2019, "briefed Khamenei on the latest developments in the Gaza Strip and the crimes of the Zionist regime in Gaza, as well as the developments in the West Bank”.
The Islamic Republic says it supports Hamas but did not play any role in the militants' surprise attack on Israel last month.
"Ayatollah Khamenei praised the steadfastness and resilience of the people of Gaza and expressed strong regret over the crimes of the Zionist regime, supported directly by Washington and some Western countries," Iran's state TV said.
Without elaborating when the meeting took place, Iran's Tasnim news agency said the country's top authority Khamenei "emphasized Tehran's consistent policy of supporting the Palestinian resistance forces against the Zionist occupiers".
Iran's clerical establishment has warned Israel, which it refuses to recognize, of "harsh consequences" if attacks continue on the Gaza Strip.