Call to end ‘control’ of Palestinians
Josef Federman
The leading challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a published interview this week that Israel should “find a way” to end its control over the Palestinians.
Former military chief Benny Gantz made the comments in an interview with the Ynet news site. It was his first interview with the Israeli media since his maiden political speech last week.
Gantz, a tall, telegenic former general, has shot up in opinion polls since last week’s speech. Leading a new centrist party called “Israel Resilience”, he has emerged as a formidable challenger to the frontrunning Netanyahu in the April 9 elections.
He has so far said little about the Palestinian issue, or whether he supports the establishment of a Palestinian state. But in Thursday’s
interview, he said the continued rule over the Palestinians is not in Israel’s interests. “We need to find a way in which we’re not controlling other people,” he said.
With peace talks frozen throughout most of Netanyahu’s decade-long rule, Gantz’s comments were welcomed by the Palestinians.
“It’s encouraging if he succeeds and he sticks to this opinion,” Nabil Abu Rdeneh, spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas, told reporters.
In the interview, Gantz was asked whether he favoured another unilateral move similar to the Gaza pullout, which is widely seen as a failure in Israel. Two years after the pullout, the Hamas militant group seized control of Gaza.
Gantz said the withdrawal was a “diplomatic move” by the Government that was carried out in a “painful but good manner”. “We need to take the lessons learned and implement them elsewhere,” he said.
His opponents quickly lambasted him. Netanyahu’s Likud Party warned that Gantz would form a “leftist” government backed by Arab parties, while the hardline nationalist New Right party claimed that Gantz is planning on “expelling” more Jews from their homes.