“The vast majority of people are united like never before. They understand what is good for Israel.”
Jerusalem:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday dismissed US President Joe Biden’s comments that Israel’s approach to the war in Gaza “hurts Israel more than helps it.”
“If he means that I am pursuing private policies that go against the will of the majority of Israelis and that it harms Israel’s interests, then he is wrong on both counts,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Politico. “.
A day earlier, Biden said Netanyahu “must pay more attention to the innocent lives lost as a result of actions in Gaza.”
Biden has supported Israel in its five-month war with Hamas, but his dissatisfaction with Netanyahu has become increasingly clear, expressing his criticism in an interview with MSNBC.
Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel sparked the war, and Netanyahu’s failure to bring back hostages still held by Hamas has led to regular protests in Israel and calls for early elections, including on Saturday Elections are held again in Tel Aviv in the evening.
Netanyahu told Politico that his policies “have the support of an overwhelming majority of Israelis” who support “our actions to destroy Hamas’ remaining terrorist camps.”
He added that the Israelis “are saying that once we destroy Hamas, the last thing we should do is put the Palestinian Authority in charge of Gaza, teach its children against terrorism, and pay for terrorism.”
Netanyahu has rejected calls for a Palestinian state, drawing global condemnation and scorn from the United States, which provides billions of dollars in military aid to Israel.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington has spoken of reforming the Palestinian Authority, which holds some administrative powers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, so that it could “reunify” the Palestinian Authority and the Gaza Strip under its leadership.
But Netanyahu said Israelis “also support my position that we should resolutely reject attempts to forcibly establish a Palestinian state.”
The Gaza war began with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, which killed about 1,160 people, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military operations have killed at least 31,045 people in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
“It is wrong to try to say that my policies are my private policies and are not supported by the majority of Israelis,” Netanyahu said.
“The vast majority of people are united like never before. They understand what is good for Israel.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
