Liberman: Netanyahu has me to thank for the premiership

With elections little more than a month away, politicians took advantage of various public platforms on Saturday to trade blows over policy, as well as attack Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ruling Likud party.

Speaking at a weekly cultural event in Beersheba, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said Netanyahu had him and his Yisrael Beytenu party to thank for winning the premiership in the last two elections, and said he suspected Netanyahu was seeking to form a national unity government with Zionist Union head Isaac Herzog.

“Likud came to power twice thanks to (the support of) Yisrael Beytenu,” Liberman said. “The temptations offered to us by Kadima and the ability to form an alternative government were obvious. “Likud have quickly forgotten this,” he added wryly.

Liberman insisted Netanyahu and Herzog were planning to work together following the March 17 election.

“The more I listen to Herzog and Netanyahu saying they won’t go for a national unity government, the more I become convinced that they will go for a national unity government,” he said. “The more they deny it, the more I suspect that that is their intention.”

Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid, meanwhile, accused Netanyahu of using the scandal caused by his intervention in the selection of Israel Prize judges to score political points.

“He wanted the uproar and he got it,” Lapid said at a Netanya event, calling the premier’s actions “a low election ruse.”

Lapid accused the leader of having “lost all touch with the reality of Israeli citizens, their day-to-day lives.”

Ex-general and Kulanu party member Yoav Galant, in Rishon Lezion, told an audience that Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon of Likud had failed to win Israel a decisive victory against Hamas in last summer’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza.

“You need to win wars, not accept a ‘tie’ with Hamas,” Galant said. He added that if he were in charge, the next Gaza campaign would be much shorter and achieve better results.

“It is unacceptable to me that Hamas sits before us as equals under Egyptian and American mediation (of a ceasefire),” Galant added.

Liberman was also critical of Israel’s actions during the summer war, saying it had failed to achieve a decisive victory against Hamas. He also blasted the prime minister’s handling of the recent confrontation with Hezbollah in northern Israel, saying Israel had acted feebly.

In January the terror group attacked an Israeli military patrol near the border with Lebanon with an anti-tank missile, killing two IDF soldiers. The assault was widely viewed as the group’s response to an airstrike in Syria last month attributed to Israel, that killed six Hezbollah members and at least one Iranian, a genral.

While Israel reacted to the Hezbollah attack with several airstrikes and artillery fire, its action was limited and the high tensions along the border soon subsided.

Liberman said Israel “should have responded to Hezbollah like Jordan responded to Islamic State,” referencing the Hashemite Kingdom’s intense air campaign against the terrorist group as well as the execution of IS prisoners in Jordanian custody following the public burning of a captured Jordanian pilot.

Labor MK Eitan Cabel, in Ness Ziona, warned that the prime minister was leading Israel to become a bi-national state.

“The continued diplomatic gridlock suggested in the visions of Netanyahu and (Jewish Home leader Naftali) Bennett will inevitably lead to the loss of the Jewish majority in the world’s only Jewish state,” Cabel said.

“It is our belief that this is anti-Zionism personified,” he added. “Netanyahu knows that he cannot face the public with this catastrophe, which is why he keeps trying to derail the discussion.”

Deputy minister Ofir Akunis of Likud, speaking at the same event, said Labor would not be invited to join Likud in the next coalition due to its “pathetic and brutal” attacks on Netanyahu and its “extreme left-wing views” of a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines.

Likud MK Danny Danon was in Givat Shmuel, where he told an audience that the left would attempt to slander the prime minister in the coming days, but “Herzog must realize that leadership is not built through personal attacks against the prime minister, and this not the way to reinvigorate his party’s campaign.”