Gadi Yarkoni, head of the Eshkol Regional Council in southern Israel, referred in an interview to Channel 12 News to his personal disillusionment regarding the citizens of Gaza after the massacre by Hamas on October 7.
"My residents are broken and the thing that bothers us the most today is our captives and missing persons. I have changed. I do not speak like you. Our captives and missing persons are sitting there and do not know what is happening to them. Families are crying out and those who are responsible for them are also the people there - who we once thought were good. Because not only Hamas and [Islamic] Jihad took them, but also ordinary people from Gaza," Yarkoni said.
He referred to the reports according to which Israel bombed the hospital in Gaza and said: "When you sit here with us and talk and ask if we hit a hospital... I don't want to hit a hospital, but it's not that interesting to me. I didn't start this war, they did. In war there are mistakes, and the whole world and Biden will look at us and say: 'You are allowed to make mistakes.'"
In fact, the hospital in question was hit by an errant rocket fired by the Islamic Jihad terror group - not by the IDF.
Yarkoni also called on the IDF to complete the mission in Gaza and on the political system to give complete backing.
"I don't see how we can live when they are so close to the fence," he said. "We can't talk about them living there and us here. We do not seek revenge and do not have to kill them, but they cannot be next to us. They are not even animals but something monstrous. If there are residents of the Gaza Strip who want to live, let them flee and return my residents - otherwise, they have no right to life."
"I demand that the IDF finish the mission so that we can live in peace and they will go somewhere else. This is not the test of Eshkol now but of the entire State of Israel. If the Prime Minister, the Defense Minister and the Chief of Staff don't do their job, we won't be able to develop the region," he concluded.