‘Hezbollah has conquered the north’: New Hope’s Haskel slams ‘incapable’ government
‘I warned of a disaster,’ says ex-Likud MK in wake of Majdal Shams tragedy, accusing her former party of lacking the capacity to govern or prosecute the war effectively
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government is well known for its members’ belligerent rhetoric, with cabinet ministers intermittently suggesting everything from the use of nuclear weapons in the Gaza Strip to forcing Palestinians to emigrate.
But while the talk is decidedly aggressive, New Hope MK Sharren Haskel believes that the government’s actions represent a “policy of surrender and softness” that has invited both external attacks and internal unrest.
Speaking with The Times of Israel this week, the former Likud lawmaker who is now a right-wing member of the opposition mounted a withering criticism of her erstwhile party, alleging that it is “incapable” of handling the challenges facing Israel and has essentially abandoned the field to Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north.
Haskel spoke before an Israeli strike in Beirut on Tuesday eliminated Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s most senior military commander and a right-hand man to terror leader Hassan Nasrallah, and before Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran in a strike attributed to Israel early Wednesday.
In a follow-up statement, the rightwing lawmaker said the deaths should send a “clear message” to Israel’s enemies: “If you attack Israel, if you harm our citizens and murder them in the most monstrous ways — you will have nowhere to hide.” She did not say whether the developments had altered her position on the government’s competence.
A self-professed devotee of the Revisionist Zionist ideology of Likud’s founders, Haskel quit the party for Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope in late 2020, complaining at the time that there was “a big gap between these ideas and the values and norms that characterize Likud today.”
New Hope’s four MKs are “not in the opposition for the sake of opposition,” Haskel told The Times of Israel of her party’s relationship with the current Likud-led coalition.
New Hope entered the war coalition in October when conflict broke out as part of its National Unity alliance with Benny Gantz, before ending its union with Gantz and then quitting the coalition in March saying it felt it had no ability to influence the government’s prosecution of the conflict.
Its current political future is unclear. Current polling shows New Hope crashing out of the Knesset if it were to run alone in the next election, but it could find itself a part of the Knesset’s largest faction if it allies with other right-wing parties.
“We’re in opposition to one of the worst governments that we could have had in such a difficult, challenging time for our country,” Haskel stated. “I mean, from a military and from a security point of view, we oppose what they do because we don’t think they are being determined enough or using a focused strategy to actually eliminate Hamas,”
The government argues that only military pressure will bring about the release of remaining hostages in Gaza but “what we’ve seen in the last four-five months is a quiet ceasefire,” she said, adding that “to have an incapable government that cannot manage the situation is our greatest liability.”
Haskel linked this “incapability” to this weekend’s rocket attack in the northern village of Majdal Shams, in which 12 children were killed by a Hezbollah rocket, as well as the storming of two IDF bases by far-right activists and lawmakers on Monday over the arrest of soldiers suspected of abusing Gaza detainees.
By being able to continue its daily assaults on northern Israel since October, “Hezbollah has conquered the northern area of Israel,” she argued. “The tragedy in Majdal Shams would have been avoided if the government’s policy had not been to give Hezbollah military superiority and hold off on shooting.”
Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, displacing tens of thousands of residents. So far, the skirmishes have resulted in 25 civilian deaths on the Israeli side as well as the deaths of 18 IDF soldiers and reservists.
Though Israel has been responding in kind to the attacks and has killed nearly 400 Hezbollah operatives, it has been unable to stop the attacks, while leaders have been hesitant to launch a full-on campaign while conducting the war in Gaza.
“I warned the Knesset several times that the policy of surrender and laxity should not be continued, I warned of a disaster and explained that every shooting must be responded to,” Haksel said. “Twelve children were murdered in cold blood, there must be a real price. This is not what deterrence nor victory looks like.”
Haskel spoke before an Israeli strike in Beirut on Tuesday eliminated Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s most senior military commander and a right-hand man to terror leader Hassan Nasrallah, and before Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran in a strike attributed to Israel.
However, in a follow-up statement, the rightwing lawmaker lauded the strikes, saying that while Israel did not take responsibility for the killing of Haniyeh, his death should send a “clear message” to Israel’s enemies: “If you attack Israel, if you harm our citizens and murder them in the most monstrous ways – you will have nowhere to hide.”
Turning to the attacks by far-right mobs on the Sde Teiman and Beit Lid bases, Haskel said “The worst government in Israel’s history lost control, and the chaos that ensued was their failure.”
While the arrest of the suspect soldiers during wartime was “difficult,” Haskel argued that “there are ways to handle [it] or change procedures according to law. The steering wheel is in their hands and instead of steering the ship they jump into the water and drag all the passengers with them.”
The government knows and states “what needs to happen,” she said, “but the control is in their hands and they’re not doing it. And I think that is the biggest frustration we have — when they say something, and how something needs to be run, but are doing the exact opposite.”
According to Haskel, this mismanagement extends beyond the war and affects issues ranging from the economy to judicial reform.
“They say we need a reform in the judicial system. We agree,” she said, referencing efforts by party leader and former Justice Minister Sa’ar to, among other moves, split the role of the attorney general into two positions.
However, she maintained that the current government’s intensely divisive 2023 efforts along those lines had less to do with fixing what many on the right see as a flawed system than with “trying to take power from the judicial system into the executive branch.”
While Haskel and her colleagues in New Hope believe that new elections are necessary to topple Netanyahu, she expressed caution, warning that doing so prematurely, while combat operations are still in progress, could “jeopardize Israel’s security.”
New Hope is currently “discussing creating a united front” on the right, but the issue is not just how many seats such a right-wing bloc would receive but who would lead it, Haskel said. She insisted that only Sa’ar, with his experience in coalition negotiations, could head such a list and that “the only alternative to the Likud is New Hope.”
Recent polls have indicated a new right-wing alliance that includes Sa’ar, Yisrael Beytenu chief Avigdor Liberman, former premier Naftali Bennett and ex-Mossad chief Yossi Cohen would become the largest Knesset party with 27-32 seats.
Cohen has reportedly decided not to enter politics and it is unlikely that any of the others would support the less popular Sa’ar taking the lead of any electoral alliance — a reality which he appears to have acknowledged by stating he would be willing to make “concessions” to create a right-wing bloc opposing Netanyahu.
Asked how her party differs from Likud, Haskel said that “we don’t just talk about doing certain reforms or changes. We’re not promising dreams that we cannot fulfill, but we promise things that are in the ideological heart of the right here in Israel, things that we know how to execute.”
“We’re going to have to rebuild our security, our deterrence, our economy, our social cohesion.”
