Zionist Union: Netanyahu has failed to defend Jerusalem

Opposition party says unlike PM, residents of the capital ‘don’t have armored cars and a house in Caesarea’

The Zionist Union party on Friday accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of failing to defend Jerusalem and residents, after the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee decided to call up Police Border reservists over the ongoing violence in the capital.

The decision by the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee came in an emergency session convened Friday — an unusual step that reflects the gravity with which Israel’s leaders view the current situation.

The opposition party accused Netanyahu of not taking the threat seriously, given that he has a private home in the tony city of Caesarea to which he can escape, as well as benefiting from the security provided to an Israeli prime minister.

“In order to get home safely under Netanyahu’s rule, residents of Jerusalem have to travel in armored vehicles and under the security of thousands of Border Police officers,” the party’s faction said, according to the Maariv website. “Unlike the prime minister, the residents of the capital don’t have armored cars and a house in Caesarea, and they and their children deserve security immediately.”

The party also lashed out at Netanyahu for budget cuts that it said had had a detrimental effect on the security of the city and its residents, and mocked him for his social media usage.

“Netanyahu, who decided recently to cut NIS 21 million from the defense of the residents of Jerusalem, has failed in the defense of the capital of Israel and its residents. It is an abject failure that cannot be obscured in a video on some Facebook post about a survey in America.”

The capital has been subject to more than a week of violence, with police clashing with Palestinian demonstrators at the Temple Mount and elsewhere in the city. Israel restricted entry to Friday prayers on the Temple Mount, the site of the al-Aqsa Mosque, to men over the age of 40 and women, after Hamas called for a “Day of Rage.”

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan on Friday accused the Palestinian Authority and Arab Israeli lawmakers for spreading “incitement and lies” about the Temple Mount and fomenting unrest. Israel has denied claims that it intends to change the so-called status quo on the Temple Mount, which is holy to both Jews and Muslims, and permit Jews to pray there.