‘A disaster for generations’: Opposition slams cabinet approval of Gaza City takeover

After the cabinet last night approved a plan for conquering Gaza City, opposition figures slam it as a “disaster” that will lead to the deaths of Israeli hostages and soldiers.

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid calls the move “a disaster that will lead to many more disasters,” in a post on X, adding that it was made in “complete contradiction to the opinion of the military and security ranks.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich “dragged” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “into a move that will take months, lead to the deaths of the hostages, the killing of many soldiers, cost tens of billions to the Israeli taxpayer, and lead to a political collapse,” Lapid adds.

“This is exactly what Hamas wanted: for Israel to be trapped in the field without a goal, without defining the picture of the day after, in a useless occupation that no one understands where it is leading,” he says.

Yisrael Beytenu party chairman and former defense minister Avigdor Liberman says that the cabinet’s decision to push for the takeover of Gaza City over the objection of top defense officials “proves that life-and-death decisions are being made in opposition to security considerations and the war’s objectives.”

“The prime minister of October 7 is once again sacrificing the security of Israeli citizens for the sake of his seat,” he adds.

Yair Golan, head of The Democrats party, says the decision means that “more hostages will be abandoned to their deaths,” and that the move is typical of Netanyahu: “He is weak, easily pressured, lacking decision-making ability, and without the capacity to bridge between what the professional level presents and the group of messianists controlling the government.”

The decision is “a disaster for generations,” Golan tells Army Radio.

“Our sons and grandsons will still patrol the alleys of Gaza, we will pay hundreds of billions over the years, and all this for reasons of political survival and messianic visions,” he adds, asking how the government plans to demilitarize the Strip: “Are we going to crawl through tunnels and retrieve the last Kalashnikovs?”