From the Liveblog of
Monday, August 5, 2024
Lapid slams government: ‘For 5 days, an entire country has been waiting to be bombed’
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"
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid slams Israel’s leadership over its handling of the Iranian threat, arguing that “there is no deterrence and there is no government.”
“I would like to ask the Israeli government, is what we are seeing in recent days the new standard?” Lapid asks during his Yesh Atid party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset. “Is it acceptable to you that for five days, an entire country has been sitting and waiting to be bombed?”
“Is this the new standard that the residents of the north will not receive even a hint from the government as to when they can go home?” he continues, accusing the government of “not even pretending” to try to return the evacuated residents of the north to their towns.
“The new standard is that young parents don’t go to a public park because it’s far from a shelter. Foreign airlines don’t want to fly here, because there’s no one to trust here. Everyone waits and waits and doesn’t know what they’re waiting for,” Lapid adds.
Israel is currently bracing itself for Iran’s response to the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last week, an act for which Jerusalem has not taken public responsibility. According to Axios, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told counterparts from G7 countries yesterday that Washington believes an Iranian attack on Israel could begin within the next 24 to 48 hours.
“This government will fall when the Knesset returns from the most unnecessary and wretched recess in the country’s history,” Lapid insists, promising to establish “an effective, functioning, decent government, which will bring order to the country and order to our lives.”
