Bennett accuses Netanyahu of mishandling Gaza war

Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett on Sunday brushed aside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first overt criticism of him in the lead-up to March’s Knesset elections and accused Netanyahu of mismanaging the war against Hamas in Gaza over the summer.

Bennett was responding to a viral video put out by Likud that showed Netanyahu in the role of a kindergarten teacher, and the politicians of his outgoing cabinet, some of whom now aim to unseat him, as unruly children.

“We will not succeed in doing anything if you keep on fighting,” Netanyahu was seen telling the children politicians in the video. A child playing Bennett appeared in the clip, along with kids who portrayed other rivals of Netanyahu, apparently in violation of a reported agreement between Likud and Jewish Home, the two largest right-wing parties, to avoid negative campaigning.

In an interview with Army Radio, Bennett insisted that despite Netanyahu’s jibe, he would not “fire his gun inside the tank,” a Hebrew-language idiom sometimes used by Bennett, a former IDF officer, to signify his principle of avoiding infighting and negative campaigning among parties of the right.

Still, he went on to issue fierce, if subtle, criticism of the prime minister, taking a swipe at Netanyahu’s management of the war in Gaza, dubbed Operation Protective Edge by Israel.

“At least this child won’t allow rockets to land near the airport,” he said, alluding to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip during the war that prompted several international airlines to cancel flights to Israel — a nightmare scenario often cited by right-wing politicians as an argument against a Palestinian state.

Bennett also took credit for the decision during the war to destroy Hamas’s extensive network of tunnels, some of which were used to launch attacks against IDF soldiers inside Israeli territory. He said he had pushed for the move even before the war had started and that the tide of Protective Edge had only changed in Israel’s favor when his plan was adopted by Netanyahu three weeks later.

“Everybody knows by now who drafted the plan to destroy the tunnels on June 30 [more than a week before the war], and who blocked that plan for three weeks, until finally [the cabinet] adopted it late, and paid a heavy price in Gaza as well as internationally,” he said, implying that Netanyahu was at least partially to blame for Israeli casualties in Gaza and for the international outcry over the death toll among Palestinians.

In the interview Bennett also responded to the recent Palestinian move to sue Israel for alleged war crimes at the International Criminal Court, and warned that Israel had prepared a “long list” of war crimes committed by the Palestinians.

“It’s time to fight back,” he said. “If the Palestinians go to The Hague, we have a long list of their war crimes. [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas] is funding terrorists as we speak. Their hands are soaked in blood.”

Prosecutors in The Hague announced on Friday that a preliminary examination would review “in full independence and impartiality” alleged crimes committed since June 13 last year, the beginning of tensions between the two sides that culminated in Protective Edge, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 2,200 Palestinians, according to Hamas figures, and 72 people on the Israeli side. Israel says about half of the Gaza dead were Hamas and other gunmen, and blames Hamas for all fatalities since it waged battle from within residential areas.