Netanyahu slams U.S. senator’s remarks
Schumer’s call for PM’S removal ‘inappropriate’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shot back Sunday at comments by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who last week called for elections in Israel to remove the current government.
“What he said is totally inappropriate,” Netanyahu said on CNN’S State of the Union, in his first public comments to the Senate floor speech by Schumer, the highest-ranking elected Jewish American in history. “It’s inappropriate to go to a sister democracy and try to replace the elected leadership there.
“We’re not a banana republic.
“The majority of Israelis support our government” and oppose “ramming a Palestinian state down our throat,” Netanyahu said on CNN.
“The majority of Israelis support the policies that we’re leading.”
Netanyahu vowed in a cabinet meeting on Sunday to press on with Israel’s campaign against Hamas by sending troops into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, despite mounting global pressure for a ceasefire.
“If we stop the war now, before all of its goals are achieved, this means that Israel will have lost the war, and this we will not allow,” he said.
Israel’s leader made an indirect reference in those remarks to Schumer and the call for elections, saying that holding a new ballot would “paralyze the country for at least six months.”
Israel’s war cabinet on Friday approved an assault on Rafah after the civilians there have been moved out. Netanyahu’s office said the Israel Defense Forces are taking steps to relocate the estimated 1.5 million Palestinians sheltering in the city toward central Gaza.
“We will operate in Rafah. This will take several weeks, and it will happen,” Netanyahu said on Sunday.
In Thursday’s 44-minute speech, Schumer, a New York Democrat and a decades-long supporter of Israel in Congress, said Netanyahu had become an “obstacle” to peace.
It was an extraordinary public rebuke as concerns grow worldwide about the civilian toll of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza, now into its sixth month.
U.S. President Joe Biden praised the remarks, saying that Schumer had made a “good speech” while stopping short of endorsing the call for Israeli elections and Netanyahu’s ouster. On Sunday, John Kirby, spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, said on ABC’S This Week that the U.S. has to respect the sovereignty of a “democratic country.”
Netanyahu said going into Rafah is the only way to eliminate Hamas’s remaining brigades and create the military pressure necessary to free all of the hostages. He called on the global community to apply pressure instead on Hamas and on its sponsor, Iran.