Gabbay: Ministers’ leaking of cabinet meeting debates leading to unnecessary war

Zionist Union chairman Avi Gabbay warns that right-wing showboating from government ministers is leading the country to an “unnecessary war” with Hamas in Gaza.

“The behavior of the government is leading us to war. A war that no one wants,” Gabbay tells his party’s faction meeting at the Knesset.

“The leaks from the cabinet in recent days are a repeat of 2014 when we were led to a war that Netanyahu didn’t know how to manage,” he says of the Protective Edge military operation.

Reported leaks from high-level security cabinet revealed clashes yesterday between ministers and IDF officials over targeting Gaza Strip Palestinians who launch incendiary balloons and kites toward Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netnayhau later said that he “had ordered the army to put an end to the kite terror.”

Gabbay charges that the leaks came from ministers “trying to win right-wing voters from each other.”

He said that Netanyahu, Yisrael Beytenu head Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and Jewish Home leader Education Minister Naftali Bennett were “putting an internal battle over leadership of the right” ahead of the interests of the country.

“Even an unnecessary war is not a red line for them,” he says.

Gabbay also took aim at the government’s “absent strategy” in dealing with the unrest on the border.

“This government is repeatedly playing into the hands of Hamas: letting them provoke us, responding when they want, and letting them dictate when there is a ceasefire,” he says.

— Raoul Wootliff