Blame game 1: Netanyahu wrong to accept ceasefire

Articles from the right-wing Jewish Press, Bloomberg news and The Telegraph

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Arriving for their press conference, August 27th, 2014. Jewish Press caption: The three salesmen -Netanyahu, Ya’alon and Gantz. Photo by Flash 90

Netanyahu Tries to Sell Bill of Goods that Israel Won Goals in the War

Has Netanyahu ever heard of Lincoln’s phrase, “You cannot fool all of the people all of the time?

By Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu, Jewish Press
August 27, 2014

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu gave a miserable sales pitch to the Israeli people Wednesday night in a weak effort to turn around public opinion that is unhappy, if not disgusted, with his agreeing to the cease-fire announced by Hamas and its new war partner, Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas.

The Prime Minister, followed by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantzת repeated over and over Israel’s achievements in the war

Netanyahu claimed that Israel achieved the goals it set from the beginning, mainly to restore quiet to Israel and to destroy terror tunnels.

He also rewrote his promise earlier this month that there will no cease-fire without disarming Hamas. Magically, that now has become a “long-term” goal.

He buried that promise among the insistence that “Hamas did not get one demand” that it made before the cease-fire.

Netanyahu listed Hamas’ demands as a deep-sea port, an airport, freeing terrorists who were released in the delay of the return of Gilad Shalit and then were re-arrested for returning to terror, mediation of Turkey and Qatar in cease-fire talks.

And what happened to his position that Israel would not negotiate under fire?

Technically, Netanyahu kept its word. Israel negotiators were recalled from Cairo every time Hamas broke a cease-fire and resume rocket fire on Israel.

But negotiations do not require face-to face discussions. Does Netanyahu want everyone to believe that Israel was not updated on the Egyptian-brokered plan and Hamas’s reactions?

Does he really want everyone to believe that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority announced the cease-fire without knowing that Israel would accept it?

And if indeed that is what happened and the cease-fire simply fell on Israel out of the blue, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s acceptance only shows how destructively passive he was, failing to seize the last days of the war to make demands.

More likely, the United States was involved. U.S. State Dept. spokeswoman Jen Psaki said yesterday that Kerry and his point man in the Middle East, Frank Lowenstein, were in constant contact with Netanyahu.

She said the United States was not an active participant in the talks but was part of the action, in one way or the other.

Netanyahu hammered away at all of the achievements that are well-known – the destruction of terror tunnels, the relentless attacks on hundreds of Hamas command centers, rocket launchers and weapons factories and storerooms.

Approximately 1,000 terrorists were killed in the war.

Israel’s successes in the war cannot be pooh-poohed. Hamas indeed was dealt a crippling blow. Hamas knows very well that the days are over when it can lob mortar shells and launching rockets at the Gaza Belt without a fierce retaliation.

However, the Israeli public, including the influential center and center-left in Tel Aviv, no longer trusts agreements with Arabs and does not trust the Israeli government, no matter who is charge, to walk out of diplomatic negotiations without opened up the chicken barn for the foxes.

“Hamas is isolated politically, and we received legitimacy in the international community,” Netanyahu insisted. He said that Israel won solid backing in the international community, and that is true – today. And maybe tomorrow.

By next week, it will have evaporated into thin air, and once again there will be international demands that Israel make peace by diplomatic suicide.

One of the most disturbing statements at the press conference was made by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, who boasted that it will take Hamas 10 years to re-build.

So what do we have? A 10-year respite before the next war?

Netanyahu noted that Israel has allegedly enjoyed peace and quiet in the north since the cease-fire that ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

That is easy to say for anyone living in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. There has been relative quiet in the north in the past eight years, but Israelis are increasingly fed up with “relative quiet,” and the dozens of cease-fire violations from Lebanon the past eight years do not promote trust in the government.

It is easy to throw darts at the Prime Minister, who faces situations and pressures that are not known to the public, but his history as a political mastermind without national leadership has lost him the confidence of the people.

Netanyahu could have overwhelmed the people with a quote from the Bible, which he likes to read, by reciting from Devarim 7:22, “And the Lord, your God, will drive out those nations from before you, little by little. You will not be able to destroy them quickly, lest the beasts of the field outnumber you.”

If he simply had told the truth Wednesday night and admitted that Israel decided to accept a near-term truce rather than paving heavy losses and an uncertain outcome if it had gone for broke, Netanyahu would have won a lot more support instead of trying to fool everyone and ending up with fooling only himself.

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu is a graduate in journalism and economics from The George Washington University. He has worked as a cub reporter in rural Virginia and as senior copy editor for major Canadian metropolitan dailies. Tzvi wrote for Arutz Sheva for several years before joining the Jewish Press

Netanyahu Hits Back at Israeli Critics of Gaza Truce With Hamas

By Calev Ben-David, Saud Abu Ramadan and Jonathan Ferziger, Bloomberg news
August 28, 2014

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back at critics of his decision to end Gaza Strip fighting, saying his country’s offensive scored a political and military victory.

“We can’t say definitively that the goal of bringing sustained quiet has been reached, but the goal of hitting Hamas hard has been achieved,” Netanyahu told a news conference late yesterday at his office in Jerusalem. The premier has been criticized by both allies and opponents for accepting an Egyptian-brokered truce that detractors say doesn’t assure Israel’s security.

The Aug. 26 cease-fire halted seven weeks of fighting that killed more than 2,100 Palestinians and 70 on the Israeli side, according to official tallies. It envisages easing curbs on Gaza’s border with Israel, letting in reconstruction materials and aid, and extending fishing zones off the territory’s coast, Egyptian and Palestinian officials said. Israel hasn’t commented on the terms. Talks on other issues, brokered by Egypt, are due to resume in a month.

<strong>What Does the World Make of Hamas?</strong>

Netanyahu enjoyed broad public support during the war. A day after the fighting ended, both political allies and residents of Israel’s rocket-scarred south were making their displeasure known. A Dialog poll published today in the Ha’aretz newspaper showed that 54 percent of Israelis say the war had no clearcut winner. The poll of 464 people yesterday had a margin of error of 4.6 percentage points.

‘Lost Faith’

“We’ve made it look like Israel is willing to accept quiet at any price,” said Tourism Minister Uzi Landau, speaking on Israel Radio yesterday. “We didn’t achieve the basic goals we set out to do,” said Landau, one of several ministers who had called for a broader ground offensive to topple Hamas’s rule in Gaza. Netanyahu had set a more modest goal of restoring security.

The cease-fire deal was also slammed by some local officials in southern Israel, which bore the brunt of rocket attacks from Gaza. Thousands of Israelis left their homes in southern Israel during the fighting for safer areas. While many returned, Haim Yellin, head of the Eshkol Regional Council near the Gaza border, told Israel Radio yesterday that he wouldn’t urge people to return immediately, saying he had “lost faith in the government.”

‘Strategic Failure’

Zehava Gal-On, leader of the dovish opposition party Meretz, said the same agreements could have been reached through negotiations with the Palestinians. On her Facebook page yesterday, she called the truce “a strategic failure on the part of Netanyahu, who went to war without clear objectives and ended it by delivering a tremendous achievement to Hamas on the backs of the residents of the south.”

Like Netanyahu, Hamas, considered a terrorist group by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union, has also been claiming victory. Shortly before the premier spoke, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh appeared in Gaza for the first time since going into hiding when the conflict started July 8. He told thousands of supporters at a rally that “the armed Palestinian resistance gained the admiration of the entire world and surprised Israel.”

Deadline Sought

As part of his postwar program, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas plans to ask the United Nations Security Council on Sept. 15 to set a deadline for ending Israel’s occupation of lands captured in 1967 that the Palestinians claim for a state. The Palestinians want to establish a state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza. Israel withdrew settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005 while retaining control of shared border crossings.

If this resolution is vetoed, the Palestinians will ask to join the International Criminal Court to press war crimes charges, foremost against Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, senior Palestinian official Nabil Sha’ath was quoted as saying by the Palestinian news agency Ma’an today.

Netanyahu said he decided to stop the war “to save lives and prevent Hamas from killing or abducting soldiers,” after Israeli forces had destroyed tunnels used by Gaza militants to smuggle goods and stage attacks.

He also said the war has “created a new diplomatic horizon,” with more Arab states sharing Israeli concerns about Islamist militants. “We will definitely attempt to advance those possibilities,” Netanyahu said.

Missile Defense

In 50 days of fighting, Israel struck 5,226 targets, and militants fired 4,591 rockets at Israeli communities. The Palestinian dead included hundreds of women and children, and thousands of homes and businesses, as well as utilities, medical centers and mosques, were destroyed or heavily damaged, according to Gaza officials. Almost all the Israeli dead were soldiers, and the Iron Dome missile-defense system intercepted 735 rockets headed for built-up areas, according to the army.

Estimates for repairing the damage wrought in Gaza by the war have ranged as high as $8 billion. The conflict has hurt the Israeli economy, too, with the drop in tourism and consumer spending prompting the central bank to unexpectedly cut its benchmark interest rate to a record low this week.

The number of visitors to Israel shrank by 26 percent in July from a year earlier. Even before the fighting erupted, economic growth was down to an annualized 1.7 percent in the second quarter, from 2.8 percent in the previous three months.

To contact the reporters on this story: Calev Ben-David in Jerusalem at cbendavid@bloomberg.net; Saud Abu Ramadan in Jerusalem at sramadan@bloomberg.net; Jonathan Ferziger in Tel Aviv at jferziger@bloomberg.net

Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet in revolt over Gaza ceasefire

Israel’s fragile coalition government is threatened by the Gaza ceasefire, which the prime minister agreed without putting it to a vote

By Inna Lazareva, The Telegraph
August 27, 2014

Tel Aviv-Israel’s acceptance of an Egyptian ceasefire proposal may have temporarily ended the war with Hamas – but the move has sparked a row within Israel’s security cabinet that now threatens the future of the country’s coalition government.

Over half of Israel’s cabinet members are said to have opposed the ceasefire deal which entered into effect on Tuesday evening, with many members furious that Mr Netanyahu opted not to bring it up to a vote.

Discussions over the ceasefire between Israel, Egypt and the Palestinians have been going over the weekend – but during this time, Mr Netanyahu is said to have kept his cabinet out of the loop, Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

Only once news of the ceasefire agreement had been reported by the Arab media were Israeli cabinet ministers briefed over the phone of the development, writes Haaretz’s Diplomatic Correspondent Barak Ravid.

Naftali Bennett, the economy minister, formerly an adviser of Mr Netanyahu and now one of the prime minister’s key critics, even sought to bring the ceasefire decision to a vote upon realising that many of the cabinet members were against the deal.

However, Mr Netanyahu produced a legal opinion which stated that a vote was not necessary.
Mr Netanyahu has faced growing opposition from his cabinet over his handling of the war with Hamas during the 50-day campaign.

Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister, who had recently pulled out his party from an alliance with Mr Netanyahu’s Likud, has ceaselessly called for a reoccupation of the Gaza strip and a crushing of Hamas, whilst criticising Mr Netanyahu for not acting with enough force.

Last month, Mr Netanyahu fired his deputy defence minister, Danny Danon, after he criticised a previous ceasefire acceptance by Mr Netanyahu. Mr Danon described it as a “humiliating” decision for Israel.
But since the latest ceasefire had gone into effect, even those close to the centre of the Israeli political spectrum have levelled criticism at Mr Netanyahu’s decision.

Members of Yesh Atid, a centre-Right party which is a key member of Mr Netanyahu’s coalition, issued a veiled threat to topple Mr Netanyahu’s coalition by pulling out its support.

“The Yesh Atid party will re-examine its future in the government, based on the political decisions the prime minister makes. Even those who support an agreement, like us, will reconsider their future in the government”, said MK Ofer Shelah.

Due to Israel’s political system, its coalition governments are notoriously unstable and rarely last their full terms.

Mr Netanyahu was also lambasted from the Left, by the head of Israel’s Meretz party.
“The ceasefire came too late and its conditions prove, finally, that Operation Protective Edge is a strategic failure for Netanyahu – who went to war without any goals. And ended it with a great achievement for Hamas at the expense of the residents of the south,” said Zehava Galon, leader of Meretz.

“It is now clear that the suffering of the residents of the south in the last few weeks, as with all the hardships that the residents of Israel have endured, was forced on us by an irresponsible government without any thinking, without any long term planning, and without any results,” she added.