From the Liveblog of
Monday, June 10, 2024
Blasting Gantz’s exit, Smotrich vows to thwart Palestinian state via ‘facts on the ground’
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"
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich excoriates National Unity party leader Benny Gantz over his party’s exit from the coalition last night, calling it “the least statesmanlike act” possible and accusing him and his allies Gadi Eisenkot and Chili Tropper of placing “personal and political considerations over the national consideration.”
Addressing reporters during his Religious Zionism party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, Smotrich says that responsibility for October 7 and any mistakes made during the war also belong to former IDF chiefs of staff Gantz and Eisenkot, “who held the most senior positions in the security establishment in the last decade, and were partners in the war cabinet and all the decisions made in it.”
Gantz’s exit was allegedly due to the right having blocked his plan “to establish a Palestinian state in the heart of the land that would pose an existential danger to the state of Israel,” Smotrich continues. “Even if they launder it and call it all kinds of names [like] the day after, a political initiative or a regional solution, it is impossible to hide the truth that the steps Gantz is pushing for are the establishment of a monster of terror” adjacent to Israel.
“We succeeded in thwarting Gantz’s demand for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the government, and I am now acting in the field to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state,” Smotrich says — adding that while the international community “can announce day and night that they recognize a Palestinian state, we will establish facts on the ground and guarantee that a Palestinian state will never be established.”
“I hope and believe that the departure of Gantz and Eisenkot will allow us to act in a much more decisive and determined manner against the Palestinian Authority, which is behind the campaign of persecution at the International Court of Justice in The Hague,” he says.
He also calls on Netanyahu to go on the offensive in Lebanon.
