The Cradle / September 9, 2024
National Unity party leader Benny Gantz said that Hamas ‘is old news’ and that ‘Hezbollah is the real issue’
Israeli opposition leader and head of the National Unity party, Benny Gantz, said on 8 September that Tel Aviv should “concentrate” on escalating against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“We have enough forces to deal with Gaza and we should concentrate on what is going on in the north,” Gantz said, adding that Iran and its “proxies” are “the real issue.”
“The time of the north has come and actually I think we are late on this,” he went on to say.
He also referred to Israel’s quick evacuation of tens of thousands of settlers from the northern border with Lebanon as a mistake.
“In Gaza, we have crossed a decisive point of the campaign. We can conduct anything we want in Gaza. We should seek to have a deal to get out our hostages but if we cannot in the coming time, a few days or few weeks, or whatever it is, we should go up north,” Gantz added. “The story of Hamas is old news.”
“We are capable of … hitting the state of Lebanon if needed,” he said.
The Israeli opposition leader’s comments came as he was speaking at a forum in Washington, DC; Gantz has often been presented by western media outlets and authorities as a more “moderate” Israeli political figure.
In early June, Gantz withdrew from Israel’s war cabinet in protest against what he saw as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure in the war on Gaza. He had issued an ultimatum earlier, warning that he would pull out of the emergency government if certain goals were not accomplished, among them returning the settlers to the north and the Israeli prisoners from Gaza.
According to Al-Hurra newspaper, Gantz said after a meeting with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Sunday that his party will offer Netanyahu a “political safety net” if he decides to stop obstructing a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement.
He is not the first opposition leader to offer the prime minister a “safety net” in exchange for concluding a deal.
Gantz also said during his trip to Washington that he “expects the international community to support Israel’s intensification of civilian and military pressure in the Gaza Strip,” adding that pressure “is what led to the completion of the first exchange deal with Hamas, and that the intensification will help eliminate the movement more quickly.”
The US is expected to soon present its “final” ceasefire and exchange proposal. Netanyahu’s insistence on maintaining a troop presence on the Gaza–Egypt border, among other things, has prevented an agreement from being reached.
Gantz’s comments come amidst a renewed surge in Israeli threats and increased calls for an expanded conflict with Hezbollah.
“Iran’s strongest arm is Hezbollah in Lebanon. I have instructed the [army] and all security forces to prepare to change this situation. There is no possibility that we will continue in the current situation, and we are obligated to safely return all the residents of the north to their homes,” Netanyahu said on Sunday.
Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called on 5 September for an escalation against Lebanon.
“We are now paying the price for 30 years of a false perception, of not being prepared to pay the price of war, and therefore we made the monsters of terror in Gaza and Lebanon grow stronger … the war must end only when Hamas and Hezbollah are absent,” Smotrich said.
“There will be a war [with Lebanon], there is no choice. It will have prices and it will be complex. After 30 years it is time to change,” he added.
Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdullah Bou Habib told Al-Jazeera on Saturday that Israel plans to continue attacking Lebanon regardless of whether or not a ceasefire is reached in Gaza.
“Israel sent us a message through intermediaries, making it clear that they are not interested in a ceasefire in Lebanon, even after a ceasefire is reached in Gaza. Israel is determined to continue the war in the north,” Bou Habib said.
Hezbollah has vowed not to stop its operations until a ceasefire is reached in Gaza and has warned Israel that it will fight “without restraint” if total war is imposed on Lebanon.
Following a brief period of relative calm after Hezbollah’s retaliation to the killing of its top commander late last month, the exchange of fire has re-intensified on the Lebanese border.
As Israel’s indiscriminate and deadly attacks continue on south Lebanon, several Israeli army sites have been struck by Hezbollah drones and rockets over the past few days.
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Israel needs to shift military focus to Lebanon, Gantz says
The National / September 9, 2024
Former war cabinet and defence minister says ‘time of the north has come’.
Israel’s military focus needs to be shifted to Lebanon and countering Iran after almost a year of war in Gaza, former Israeli defence minister Benny Gantz said, even as Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have traded almost daily cross-border fire.
“We have enough forces to deal with Gaza and we should concentrate on what is going on in the north,” told a Middle East forum in Washington, adding that Israel made a mistake in evacuating northern areas of the country, where more than 60,000 people are believed to have left their homes.
Hamas is “old news”, while Tehran and its proxy groups “are the real issue”, said Gantz, who stepped down from Israel’s war cabinet in June. “In Gaza, we have crossed a decisive point of the campaign.”
“We can conduct anything we want in Gaza. We should seek to have a deal to get out our hostages but if we cannot in the coming time, a few days or few weeks, or whatever it is, we should go up north. The time of the north has come, and actually, I think we are late on this.”
The war in Gaza began on October 7, when Hamas killed about 1,200 people and abducted about 240 during attacks on southern Israeli communities. Gaza’s Health Ministry says almost 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the enclave since the conflict broke out. In Lebanon, Israeli air strikes have killed about 614 people since the beginning of cross-border exchanges with Iran-backed Hezbollah on October 8, according to an AFP tally.
Most of those killed have been Hezbollah fighters, but the death toll also includes about 138 civilians. About 100,000 people are estimated to have been displaced from their homes in southern Lebanon. On the Israeli side of the border at least 24 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, including in the occupied Golan Heights, where a suspected Hezbollah strike killed 12 Druze children in the town of Majdal Shams.
Last week, Gantz accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of lying about the return of displaced citizens to their homes in northern areas being one of the aims of the war.
“Netanyahu flatly lied today when he said that the return of the residents of the north is one of the goals of the war,” Gantz’s National Unity Party said. It added that Mr Netanyahu had initially “repeatedly refused” to include the return of the displaced as an objective.
“Even worse, a year into the war, he refuses to act to make it happen.”
Netanyahu has said the war in Gaza will not end until Hamas is destroyed, and he pushed back against widespread demands to seal a ceasefire agreement over the weekend. On Saturday, which marked 11 months since the start of the war, more than 750,000 protesters gathered, including 500,000 in Tel Aviv, for what the Hostages and Missing Families Forum called the largest demonstration in Israel’s history.
Former hostage Andrey Kozlov, who was freed from Gaza in June, said the government must agree to a ceasefire “even if it is difficult”. Danielle Aloni, who was released during a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas in November, said Netanyahu must “seal the deal now”.
