Israel’s Netanyahu Says Wasn’t Warned of Planned Hamas Attack

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv on October 28, 2023 amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv on October 28, 2023 amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
TT
20

Israel’s Netanyahu Says Wasn’t Warned of Planned Hamas Attack

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv on October 28, 2023 amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv on October 28, 2023 amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday took a jab at his intelligence chiefs on the X platform, saying they never warned him Hamas was planning its wide-scale attack on Oct. 7, but later retracted his comments and issued an apology.

The remarks, posted on X at 1 a.m. on Sunday (around 2300 GMT on Saturday), caused a political uproar and a rift within the war cabinet of Netanyahu, who has drawn public ire for not taking responsibility over intelligence and operational failures relating to Hamas' rampage through southern Israel.

While top officials - from the heads of the military and the Shin Bet domestic spy service to his finance minister - have all acknowledged their failures, Netanyahu has not.

He has only said that there would be time to ask tough questions, including of himself, after the war.

Israel's military spokesperson, asked about Netanyahu's comments during a daily briefing with reporters, declined to respond, saying: "We are now at war, focused on the war."

Israeli officials have said events leading up to and including the handling of the Hamas attack itself would be investigated, but that the current focus was on the conflict.

Netanyahu's now-deleted post had said: "At no time and no stage was a warning given to Prime Minister Netanyahu regarding war intentions of Hamas. On the contrary, all security officials, including the head of army intelligence and the head of the Shin Bet, estimated that Hamas was deterred and interested in an arrangement."

In a second post on X about 10 hours later, Netanyahu wrote: "I was wrong," adding that his remarks "should not have been made and I apologize for that."

"I give full backing to all the heads of the security branches," he said.

Netanyahu's initial comments were quickly rebuked by current and past allies, including Benny Gantz, a former defense minister who is now in Netanyahu's war cabinet.

Gantz said on X that Netanyahu should retract what he said and let the matter go.

"When we are at war, leadership must show responsibility, decide to do the right things and bolster the forces in a way that they can carry out what we demand of them," Gantz said.

The well-planned surprise Hamas attack was the deadliest for Israel in its 75-year history. Israel has since bombarded the Gaza Strip with devastating air strikes and begun ground operations with the aim of toppling the Iran-backed Islamist group and returning scores of captives abducted from Israel to Gaza.

The retracted post "points to just one thing: he (Netanyahu) is not interested in security, he is not interested in hostages, only politics," said opposition lawmaker Avigdor Lieberman, once Netanyahu's defense minister, in a radio interview.

Yossi Cohen, who headed the Mossad spy agency under previous Netanyahu governments, told Israel Radio: "You take responsibility from the beginning of your job, not from the middle."



Israeli Likud Party Ministers Urge Netanyahu to Annex West Bank

Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)
Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)
TT
20

Israeli Likud Party Ministers Urge Netanyahu to Annex West Bank

Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)
Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)

Cabinet ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party called on Wednesday for Israel to annex the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the Knesset recesses at the end of the month.

They issued a petition ahead of Netanyahu's meeting next week with US President Donald Trump, where discussions are expected to center on a potential 60-day Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas.

The petition was signed by 15 cabinet ministers and Amir Ohana, speaker of the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

There was no immediate response from the prime minister's office. Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, long a confidant of Netanyahu, did not sign the petition. He has been in Washington since Monday for talks on Iran and Gaza.

"We ministers and members of Knesset call for applying Israeli sovereignty and law immediately on Judea and Samaria," they wrote, using the biblical names for the West Bank captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Their petition cited Israel's recent achievements against both Iran and Iran's allies and the opportunity afforded by the strategic partnership with the US and support of Trump.

It said the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel demonstrated that the concept of Jewish settlement blocs alongside the establishment of a Palestinian state poses an existential threat to Israel.

"The task must be completed, the existential threat removed from within, and another massacre in the heart of the country must be prevented," the petition stated.

Most countries regard Jewish settlements in the West Bank, many of which cut off Palestinian communities from one another, as a violation of international law.

With each advance of Israeli settlements and roads, the West Bank becomes more fractured, further undermining prospects for a contiguous land on which Palestinians could build a sovereign state long envisaged in Middle East peacemaking.

Israel's pro-settler politicians have been emboldened by the return to the White House of Trump, who has proposed Palestinians leave Gaza, a suggestion widely condemned across the Middle East and beyond.