New Delhi: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “miscalculating” if he wants to indefinitely take charge of post-war Gaza, the country’s former leader Ehud Olmert has said, adding that Netanyahu was “destroyed emotionally” after failing to prevent Hamas’s attack on 7 October that killed over 1,400.
In an interview with Politico, Olmert said Netanyahu was going through a “nervous breakdown” as he now anticipates he will be thrown out of office for failing to safeguard the country’s national security.
“[Netanyahu] has shrunk. He’s destroyed emotionally, that’s for sure. I mean, something terrible happened to him. Bibi has been working all his life on the false pretence that he is Mr Security. He’s Mr Bullshit. Every minute he is prime minister he is a danger to Israel. I seriously mean it,” Politico quoted him as saying.
In an interview with America’s ABC News two days ago, Netanyahu was asked who would govern Gaza after the war against Hamas was over. He said: “I think Israel for an indefinite period will have the overall security responsibility because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have that security responsibility.”
Israel ferociously retaliated to the 7 October attack with airstrikes and a total siege of the enclave for three weeks, and has now sent in ground troops to north Gaza to demolish the Hamas network. Over 10,000 people have died in Gaza in the last month, which include mostly women and children as well as journalists and UN aid workers.
Olmert said taking control of Gaza would be “steering off course”, stressing the priority should be on negotiating an endgame, which would involve talks on the formation of a Palestinian state “rather than turning back the clock to full military oversight over Gaza”.
He warned that Netanyahu’s plans sounded like going back to 2005, when Israel’s military ruled the coastal enclave.
“It’s not in Israel’s interests to oversee the security of Gaza,” he said. “It is in our interests to be able to defend ourselves in a different way than we did before the October 7 attack. But to control Gaza again? No,” emphasised Olmert, who led the country from 2006 to 2009 as a leader from the liberal Kadima party.
He also complained that Israel’s war cabinet was not thinking soberly, amid increasing calls within the country for Netanyahu to take responsibility and step down.
Wondering what would be the next stage after the war, Olmert ruled out Arab states ruling Gaza, batting instead for a “serious proposal for two-state negotiations”.
“If Israel produced a serious proposal for two-state negotiations it would have a dramatic impact on the international community. It would give us more space and time to achieve the aims of our military operations — it would have an impact on public opinion in Western countries and in the media. It would show Israel is committed to doing something it hasn’t wanted to in the past 15 years. So, something positive could come out of all of this. But we’re not doing it,” Olmert added.
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