Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who was the sole cabinet member who didn’t immediately back a ground operation on Tuesday, explains in a Channel 2 interview that she was prepared to approve it only in real time, which she did on Thursday after the Israeli negotiation team returned from Cairo with Hamas’s rejection of a ceasefire proposal, and the failed Hamas infiltration attempt that morning. “I fully support this operation,” she says.
After those two incidents, she says, she realized that “Hamas lives in a completely different opera.”
Strikingly, she does not rule out bringing down Hamas as a possible consequence of the resort to force. Israel is intent on restoring security for its people, she stresses, and will do some one way or another. “I’m not taking anything off the table,” she says.
Livni (head of the centrist Hatnua) adds that Israel can say to the family of Eitan Barak, the solider who died in combat in Gaza early Thursday morning, that “he died defending the homeland” after all other measures to prevent this conflict had been tried and failed.
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni speaks to Channel 2 on Friday July 18, 2014. (screen capture: Channel 2)
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Friday, July 18, 2014
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