From the Liveblog of
Saturday, October 28, 2023
Liberman: US won’t let this war go on for months; I warned PM in 2016 that Hamas would attack
Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman says he gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a detailed document in December 2016 warning that Hamas would attack in “precisely the way it did” on October 7 if its capabilities were not dismantled.
Liberman, who was defense minister at the time, tells Channel 12 that the document set out the Hamas-attack scenario exactly as it occurred.
He says Netanyahu had to be persuaded to raise the issue at a cabinet meeting, where the document was “waved away dismissively,” including by security chiefs, and that he was made to feel “arrogant” for having presented it.
He says Israel’s time for military action in Gaza is limited, and that the US is indicating as much. Anyone who thinks the war against Hamas can continue for months isn’t watching the world, he says.
Liberman says there is enough fuel, food and medicine in Gaza for two months.
He also says the conflict must not end before Hezbollah is forced back from the northern border, because otherwise “everything that happened in the south will happen in north.”
He says the IDF is ready for a full-scale ground offensive and that the political leadership must not keep delaying.
