Avi Gabbay
Avi GabbayHillel Maeir/TPS

Zionist Union chairman Avi Gabbay criticized on Wednesday the Cabinet members who demanded a more decisive response to the rocket attacks from Gaza.

In an interview with Army Radio, Gabbay said that "these statements by Minister Shaked and Minister Steinitz that 'we will give it to them' and so on, someone on the other side is sitting and listening - and this is exactly the miscalculation.”

"These claims that people do not understand one another is what caused Operation Protective Edge,” he continued. "What, they did not understand, they did not understand during the operation that they caused it? That Bennett and Liberman, with their comments, caused Protective Edge?”

Gabbay charged, “They pressured Netanyahu and the Prime Minister started an operation when he did not want one... to all the ministers who want to conquer Gaza: Have you not learned a lesson? Have you not visited enough bereaved families? I call on the Prime Minister to hit the terrorists with all his might, but not to be pressured by the headlines."

Gabbay just last year made remarks that are the complete opposite of what he said Wednesday, as pointed out by Hadashot TV. The remarks came in an interview Gabbay gave to the Be’er Sheva-based Radio Darom in July of 2017.

"In my opinion, the moment there is an escalation in Gaza and a significant escalation at that, we have to conquer Gaza and get it over with," Gabbay said at the time.

Since being elected chairman of the Labor party, Gabbay has made a series of contradictory statements.

Last November, he said that he was against evicting communities in Judea and Samaria because “you can't evacuate 100,000 people in any arrangement that may be, it's impractical and unrealistic and not sensible.”

At the same time, Gabbay has also made clear that “I believe in territorial concessions, and in negotiations with the Palestinians. I also believe in a solution based on two states for two peoples, and a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty."