Rashid Yousef, a Hamas spokesperson, said in September: “If the United States does not open a new war against the Jews, the last and best chance for the Jewish people is to destroy the Zionist entity… A peace deal must be reached with the Palestinians for the next five years. If Israel refuses this, we will be left without a state. We reject the very idea of a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

And in November 2012, after Israeli forces killed four Palestinian children, a Hamas spokesman said of them: “The Israeli occupation forces’ response, with its massacre of our children, proves that its hands and its feet have reached the limits of humanity.”

Hamas leaders and operatives have been kidnapped from the Gaza Strip more than 60 times since Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in July against Hamas and other Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip that it claims is the responsibility for firing rockets and mortars at Israeli cities. The Israeli government has repeatedly asserted with no evidence that Hamas is responsible for such attacks. The group’s political leadership is also responsible for attacks, most notably those on Egyptian soldiers at the Rafah crossing.

In his statement late Monday night, Netanyahu said that even if he was mistaken and there was no war underway, “the Israeli public would have to take a solemn and responsible decision: Does the Jewish people want another war? Does it want a Palestinian state, a Palestinian state alongside Israel where rockets are fired toward our cities in response to Israel’s attack on the Hamas leadership. And does the Israeli government want to see the Jewish people have a new war that will break the trust of the Arab governments in peace? Does the Israeli government want to see the Jewish people have another war that will break the trust of the world in our state’s security?”

Netanyahu said: “All of us in the Israeli government will be responsible for answering that question.”