From the Liveblog of
Monday, May 19, 2025
Yair Golan: Witkoff, not Netanyahu, is working to bring home the hostages
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"
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has turned “a just campaign” against Hamas in Gaza “into a continuous and pointless political war of survival,” alleges The Democrats chairman Yair Golan.
Addressing reporters ahead of his party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, Golan declares that the recently launched IDF Operation Gideon’s Chariots does not represent “military pressure to release the hostages, because it was possible to release all the hostages in one comprehensive deal long ago and return them home to their families.”
“It is also not an operation to collapse Hamas because in order to collapse Hamas, it was possible to close the deal long ago, to end the war, and, in an American and regional arrangement, to build a governing alternative to Hamas and collapse it once and for all. What we are seeing in Gaza is a Netanyahu-Smotrich operation to manipulate public consciousness in Israel in order to survive another [legislative] session in the Knesset,” he says.
“These days, we see how the Trump administration is fighting and struggling with Netanyahu to bring an end to the war and the release of the hostages. Trump’s people are the ones doing everything to return the hostages. Not Netanyahu, but [US special envoy to the Middle East Steve] Witkoff.”
“All the hostages can be released. The one who is preventing this is Netanyahu. Hamas can be collapsed in a regional political arrangement. The one who is thwarting it is Netanyahu,” who is acting out of “anti-Zionist considerations,” Golan adds.
The Times of Israel Community.