Opposition head accuses Netanyahu of playing up Hezbollah tunnel operation

Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni accuses Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of over-dramatizing the army’s discovery of Hezbollah tunnels infiltrating its territory from Lebanon for political gain.

Livni tells public radio that while she and the rest of the opposition welcomed the army’s discovery of the tunnels and their eventual demolition, “the incident must be kept in proportion.”

“We are not now in a situation where our soldiers are behind enemy lines,” says Livni, who served as foreign minister during Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah.

“We are talking about engineering activity within the sovereign territory of the state of Israel,” she adds, accusing Netanyahu of “blowing the incident out of proportion.”

Livni alleges that part of Netanyahu’s thinking was to deflect criticism made by residents of southern Israel who say he has failed to quash the threat of cross-border rocket fire from terror groups in the Gaza Strip.

“Therefore he made a defensive engineering event into a dramatic military operation,” she says.

“This was done from two reasons — either the prime minister is himself panicking or he wants to sow panic to justify his actions both in delaying elections and abandoning the residents of southern Israel.”

Livni later tells foreign journalists in a phone briefing that the international community should bring greater pressure on Lebanon over Hezbollah’s activities.

— AFP