Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday blasted the leaders of the National Unity Party, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, for the way they resigned from the government.
"There are those who want to change the goals, and to my understanding that is what the two who resigned wanted. They want euphemistic decisions of defeat and to leave Hamas intact - this is unacceptable to me," Netanyahu said at the weekly Cabinet meeting.
He also criticized the military echelon and noted that "in order to reach the goal of eliminating the capabilities of Hamas, I made decisions that were not always acceptable to the military echelon. We have a state with an army and not an army with a state."
The National Unity Party responded, "Defeatism: To be afraid of letting the IDF maneuver. To fritter away the entry to Khan Yunis and Rafah. To hesitate to move the operative effort to the north. And to refuse to define the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes as part of the goals of the war. In the future, the protocols will be revealed and then the public will know who hesitated and who strived for a real victory.".
Likud was quick to issue a statement of its own in response to the National Unity Party, saying, "Those who fled the war will not preach morality to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is leading the campaign and is not willing to compromise on anything less than complete victory."
"Certainly not Benny Gantz who ran away from making difficult decisions, who succumbed to all international pressure, who agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state and who declared on every stage that he is ready to end the war before the return of all our hostage and the completion of all our goals," Likud said.
National Unity replied, "The Prime Minister's statement generator is hysterical, and rightly so. Gantz and Eisenkot were the first to call for the start of the maneuver and aggressive action in Gaza and its extension to Khan Yunis and Rafah."
"Thanks to Gantz's brave international connections, Israel received an air defense agreement that halted the Iranian attack, prevented damage and saved many lives. He never agreed to the end of the war nor to the establishment of a Palestinian state, did not give the ‘Bar-Ilan speech’ or hand over territories to Arafat, as Netanyahu did."
