Bennett: Israel should strike Iran to retaliate for Hezbollah attacks

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid said on Wednesday that, if they form the next government, they will push for a hardline deterrence policy against Iran while seeking to rebuild frayed ties with American liberals and the European Union.

Bennett, a security hawk leading the B’Yachad party alongside Lapid, told party members at an internal policy conference in Tel Aviv that attacks from Iranian proxies should be treated as if they came from Iran.

“If Hezbollah fires at us, we strike Iran. A strike by the Iranian octopus’s tentacles inside Israel’s borders will exact a price inside Iran’s borders,” Bennett declared.

While accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of tearing “Israeli society to shreds” and thus being ineffective against foreign enemies, he echoed the premier’s insistence that Israel refuse to pull back in Gaza until Hamas is disarmed.

Bennett also said he will not allow Qatar or Turkey to have any role in postwar Gaza, reiterating his call for Qatar to be labeled an enemy state.

“We will not move a millimeter from the Yellow Line until Hamas is completely disarmed and this weaponry is removed from Gaza. We will maintain security and freedom of action throughout the Gaza Strip. We will remove Qatar and Turkey from Gaza and replace them with Egypt. Whoever allows Qatar and Turkey to run Gaza is preventing the dismantling of Hamas,” said Bennett.

“We will use our credit with the White House only for the benefit of Israel’s security, and we will also know how to say ‘no’ when necessary and stand up for Israel’s security without compromise. Just as I did during the government I headed when I said no to President [Joe] Biden on the issue of establishing an American consulate in East Jerusalem.”

Bennett also backed redefining rampant and deadly crime in the Arab community as a national security threat rather than a criminal one, urging the deployment of the IDF and Shin Bet in the fight against illegal weapons.

“There are about half a million illegal weapons circulating today within the borders of the State of Israel. This is an incomprehensible number. The flawed conception here is that the government treats this as a criminal problem, when it is in fact a security threat of the highest order. This is why they’ve done nothing about it,” he said.

“This is a ticking time bomb. Here too, we will fundamentally change our approach. We will define arms smuggling as terrorism in every way. We will use the full power of the state — including the Shin Bet and the IDF. Wherever there is intelligence that there are weapons caches, we will declare that location a closed security zone, and we will clear our streets of illegal weapons so that they are not then aimed at Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike.”

On the theme of weapons, Bennett, a former hi-tech CEO, insisted that Israel’s current leadership had failed to grasp that “AI is the weapon of the future.”

“In the not-so-distant future, AI capabilities will be more important than even nuclear weapons. Artificial intelligence is the next superpowers’ arms race, and despite the current government lagging over the past four years, we will not let Israel be left behind,” he said.

Repairing ties with allies, world Jewry

Lapid, who has served as both prime minister and foreign minister, told party members that he will work to repair ties with the US and bring the relationship back “to the bipartisan status Israel enjoyed until four years ago.”

“The number one goal and challenge of our foreign policy is to restore and change the direction of our relations with the United States,” he said, calling to “work with both parties, not only in Washington, but also at the state level.”

Lapid slammed Netanyahu for giving up American military aid, calling it “a grave mistake” and insisting that “we must fight for it.” Netanyahu has repeatedly said he would seek to end Israel’s reliance on US aid, which has become increasingly unpopular among Americans.

Israel must also focus on “rebuilding ties with the European Union, deepening connections with the NATO alliance and addressing — despite the difficulty –public opinion in countries like Spain, France and Ireland” while at the same time strengthen regional integration, including making a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia “a central goal in the coming years” so long as it prevents uranium enrichment by Riyadh, Lapid added.

“Israeli foreign policy is what brings us an F-35 that can attack Iran as well as the continuous air corridor that leads there. Satellite coverage. Apache helicopters. The Iron Dome. A hi-tech economy. Scientific cooperation with Europe. Cooperation in cyber. Oil from Azerbaijan. Preferential access to world markets. Partnerships in critical technologies and AI. All of this is now in danger,” he said, accusing the government of negligence, arrogance and “amateurism.”

Turning to relations with Diaspora Jewry, Lapid leveled an attack against recent attempts to sideline non-Orthodox denominations in Israel, stating that to “restore our relations with Diaspora Jewry,” Israelis must “respect their Judaism.”

“The overwhelming majority of American Jewry are Reform or Conservative. They have suffered enough from a terrible wave of antisemitism against them; there is no reason for them to be insulted here in Israel – their Judaism, their rabbis and their rituals,” he said.

Calling to merge the Diaspora Affairs Ministry with the Foreign Ministry, Lapid said that “world Jewry is our family, and it is also a strategic and diplomatic asset that we need to protect.”