From the Liveblog of
Thursday, August 8, 2024
Netanyahu to Time magazine: I’ll stay in office as long as I believe I can help lead Israel to a secure future
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to try and stay in office for as long as he can, telling Time magazine in an interview that: “I will stay in office as long as I believe I can help lead Israel to a future of security, enduring security and prosperity.”
He also tells the magazine: “I’d rather have bad press than a good obituary.”
The prime minister, who has not directly taken responsibility for the failure before and on October 7, is asked if he were in the opposition, what would he say about a leader who presided over Israel’s worst security failures staying in power?
“It depends what they do,” he says. “What do they do? Are they capable of leading the country in war? Can they lead it to victory? Can they assure that the postwar situation will be one of peace and security? If the answer is yes, they should stay in power.”
“In any case,” he says, “that’s the decision of the people.”
Time also publishes a full transcript of the interview.
He is asked in that transcript, “Looking back, was it a mistake to allow the Qataris to transfer money into Gaza?”
Says Netanyahu: “I don’t think it made that big a difference, because the main issue was the transfer of weapons and ammunition from the Sinai into Gaza. That’s what made them—it wasn’t so much a question of money. It was a question of availability, and that’s why I insist now on cutting off this supply route for the, uh, in the post-Hamas period, so you don’t have to resupply the resurgence of terror.”
His primary mistake, Time says he argued in the August 4 interview, was acceding to his Security Cabinet’s previous reluctance to wage full-on war. “Oct. 7 showed that those who said that Hamas was deterred were wrong,” he says. “If anything, I didn’t challenge enough the assumption that was common to all the security agencies.”
He is also asked, in the transcript: “Why didn’t you take out Hamas earlier? You could have gone all the way in 2014?”
Replies Netanyahu, “No I couldn’t… there wasn’t a consensus. There was, in fact, a consensus among the military that we shouldn’t do it. But more importantly, you can overrule the military, but you can’t, you can’t act in a vacuum. There was no public, no domestic support for such, for such an action. There was certainly no international support for such an action, and you need both in order to — or at least one of them in order to take such an action. I think that became evident right after the October 7th massacre.”
His interviewer Eric Cortellessa then asks: “Israel’s military and intelligence services warned that your judicial overhaul was dividing Israel, and that Hezbollah and Hamas saw it as weakening Israel’s deterrence. Why didn’t you listen to them?”
Replies the prime minister: “They actually made a point to say that that’s not the case in Gaza. They said that it might affect the community overall, other parts of the Middle East, but they were quite specific that it didn’t, didn’t affect Gaza. But the more important thing is, I think that what really affected them, if anything, was the idea of someone refusing to serve. The refusal to serve because of an internal political debate. I think that, if anything, that had an effect, as it turned out…”
Does he think Hamas and Hezbollah “saw this as an opening, the fact that your society was so ruptured and divided?” he is asked.
Answers Netanyahu: “I don’t think that was the key determinant. They’re determined to wipe us off the map anyway. It’s been Hamas’s position throughout, and the plans for this attack actually preceded the judicial reform by, let me check that, but I think it’s about a year.”
Presses Cortellessa: “President Trump told me you’ve been ‘rightfully criticized’ for October 7th. Is he wrong?
Netanyahu: “I won’t get into an argument, but I would say that—criticized for what?”
“That it happened on your watch.”
Netanyahu: “Well, you know, when it happens on your watch, I suspect that I felt the same thing that President Roosevelt felt after Pearl Harbor, and President George W. Bush felt after 9/11. It happens on your watch. You try to see how it could it have been prevented. But right now my responsibility is what? To win the war, to make sure it doesn’t happen again, to destroy Hamas’s military capabilities so it doesn’t happen.”
