Opposition slams PM’s handling of Israeli captives affair

Members of the opposition came out in full force on Saturday to criticize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government’s handling of the disappearance of two Israeli men into the Gaza Strip over the past year. The criticism focused in large part on the leadership’s failure to update even senior lawmakers on the two missing Israelis in the months before a gag order on the affair was finally lifted on Thursday.

Yesh Atid MK Ya’akov Peri, a former head of the Shin Bet security agency, called on Saturday for an urgent discussion in the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on what he called the government’s “failure to report on the captivity of two Israeli citizens held by Hamas.”

“It is inconceivable that in a democratic state, such an important issue is not divulged and is not overseen and supervised by experienced sources,” he said, according to Israel Radio.

He called for all relevant representatives of the various security agencies to attend the meeting

Meretz Chairwoman Zahava Gal-on called the PM’s behavior in the affair “reckless.”

“The prime minister has forgotten that we do not live in a presidential regime and that he had an obligation to report it to the security cabinet and to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. He can’t allow himself to keep such things between him and the defense minister [Moshe Ya’alon],” Gal-on said Saturday at a cultural event in Rishon Lezion.

“This is a serial behavior on the part of the PM who makes a mockery of the system of checks and balances that are supposed to stop him,” she said.

The Likud party responded Saturday, charging that the criticism was political in nature, and that Netanyahu was personally handling the affair.

The gag order concerning the two hostages, Avraham Mengistu, and a second unnamed Bedoun captive was lifted following a court petition by two Israeli media outlets.

Netanyahu visited the Mengistu family on Friday for the first time since Avraham disappeared into the Gaza Strip last September. Israel has said it expects Hamas to release the captives on humanitarian grounds and has indicated it will not release any prisoners in exchange for the two, who seem to have crossed into the Palestinian enclave of their own accord.

Mengistu climbed over the Gaza security fence in September last year. Family members have described him as “unwell” and urged Hamas to consider his condition and return him to Israel immediately.

The second hostage, an Israeli from the Bedouin village of Hura, reportedly entered Gaza via the Erez Crossing in April. According to an Israeli official, the man has mild psychological issues and has a history of entering Jordan, Egypt and Gaza.

After news broke of the affair, questions arose as to why so many lawmakers were kept in the dark about the two cases.

Yisrael Beytenu party chief Avigdor Liberman expressed his surprise Thursday that two Israeli citizens were being held by Hamas, saying that he was kept out of the loop, even though at least one of the captives was nabbed during his tenure as foreign minister in the last government.

“While I was foreign minister and a member of the cabinet, I wasn’t updated [about the case],” Liberman said Thursday while on a tour of Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. The MK served as foreign minister until May 2015.

Liberman was joining a slew of lawmakers who also complained of having been left in the dark after the gag order on the case was lifted Thursday morning.

“I was astounded. I read about it on [Israeli news site] Ynet this morning, I called the committee administrator and asked him whether the committee had been informed,” said Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Tzachi Hanegbi. He said that he had not heard about the incident since he started to serve as committee chairman over a month ago.

“We are doing everything in our ability to return Avra [short for Avraham] to Israel, just as we are in contact with the family of the other Israeli citizen in order to bring him back to Israel as well,” Netanyahu said on Friday after visiting the Mengistu family

“We will not slacken and we will do everything necessary in order to bring these citizens back home,” he said.

“We face a very cynical and cruel enemy that denies the basic humanitarian obligation to send innocent citizens back to their country,” Netanyahu said.