Israel can't yield to Hamas threat to kill hostages, says Henry Kissinger

Mia Jankowicz
·3 min read
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  • Henry Kissinger said that Israel should not give in to Hamas' threat to hostages.

  • Hamas recently said it would kill hostages if Israel strikes Gaza homes without warning.

  • Hamas' actions, he said, are evidence that the group wants to "mobilize the Arab world against Israel."

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said that Israel cannot give in to Hamas' threats to kill Israeli hostages, but called it a "heartbreaking decision" for any leader to have to make.

The former top diplomat made the remarks to Mathias Döpfner, CEO of publisher Axel Springer, for German newspaper Die Welt. Axel Springer is Insider's parent company.

Following Hamas' attacks over the weekend, during which it killed at least 1,200 people and took at least 100 hostages, a spokesperson for the group's armed wing, Abu Ubaida, said that they would kill a civilian hostage every time Israel struck a Gazan civilian home "without warning."

Asked by Döpfner how he would handle Hamas' threat to hostages, Kissinger said: "Sitting on the outside, it is not possible for me to state a complete answer."

"Theoretically and conceptually, I would say that we cannot yield to that," he said.

Peace talks are "inconceivable" if "terrorists can appear openly and take hostages and kill people," he said.

Since the surprise attack over the weekend, Israel has declared war on Hamas and bombarded Gaza with rockets, reducing some entire neighborhoods to rubble.

More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the strikes as of Wednesday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.

Speaking of the threat to hostages, Kissinger said that "there has to be some penalty, there has to be some serious limitation of their capability of taking this kind of action."

The first instinct of any leader is to try and negotiate peace, he said, but he said Hamas had demonstrated that it cannot be appeased.

The 100-year-old diplomat, who became a refugee after fleeing Nazi Germany in 1938, led US foreign policy under the presidency of Richard Nixon.

His interview with Döpfner comes 50 years after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, during which, as Nixon's Secretary of State, he played a role in negotiating a peace deal between Israel and Egypt.

He said the current conflict "has the danger of escalating and bringing in other Arab countries under the pressure of some of their public opinion."

"And then we're back to where we were in 1973," he added.

Back then, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was more open to an agreement, paving the way for Syria to concede, he said. But Hamas leaders aren't open to that, he said, and should be "excluded from a political role."

Hamas' actions, he said, are evidence that the group wants to "mobilize the Arab world against Israel" and end any prospect of peace negotiations.

Kissinger also drew a comparison between Hamas' attack and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying both conflicts are "a fundamental attack on the international system."

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