Opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog slammed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Monday, telling him that “there is not one Israeli who believes you are working on his or her behalf.”
Herzog, expounding on what he called the government's “failure to ensure the interests of the Israeli people” in the proposed gas deal the Knesset voted on Monday, said the plan, like much else Netanyahu believes in, “is illogical, and unfair to Israelis citizens.”
Herzog, along with others on the Left, believe that even the revised gas arrangement, in which the government will lease the rights to extract and develop gas to private companies, is still too generous to the developers, and that a much heftier licensing fee should be implemented.
Netanyahu, said Herzog, refused to see the logic of further revising the deal, despite the many calls to do so by experts and MKs.
“Like with the Iran agreement, you are stubbornly knocking your head against the wall on the gas issue,” said Herzog. “The problem is that there is a whole nation behind you – the gas, like Iran, is not your personal concern. We are in favor of developing gas, but the conditions and contracts to do so must change.”
By his actions, Herzog added, Netanyahu “is destroying all the elements of good government."
"Netanyahu, you are racing ahead with all your strength, but who do you work for? How do you bypass legal norms to get what you want? Is it right to throw away the rights of the Israeli people for the next 50 years, as your gas deal will do?"
"Unfortunately, the way you run the economy does not take into effect the needs of Israelis," Herzog charged. "You have gone too far with this gas deal.”