Israel opposition leader and Chairman of National Unity camp, Benny Gantz, has accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “sabotaging” prisoner swap deal negotiations with Hamas, Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported.
According to the outlet, Gantz criticised Netanyahu’s address to foreign press about the deal. “We are in sensitive days – life and death are truly controlled by the tongue,” he said.
Gantz’s statements came two days after the Wall Street Journal published an interview with Netanyahu in which he said: “I will not agree to end the war [in Gaza] before eliminating Hamas.”
Gantz said: “As Netanyahu himself said just a week ago, the less we talk, the better, while the negotiators are working, Netanyahu is sabotaging the negotiations again.”
Netanyahu, Gantz explained, “does not have a mandate to thwart the return of our hostages again for political reasons. Their return is the right thing to do.”
In response, Netanyahu’s office said Gantz, can not preach “about the need to eliminate Hamas and the sacred mission of returning our captives.”
“It is no coincidence that since Gantz left the government for political reasons, the prime minister has led painful blows against Hamas, the destruction of Hezbollah, and direct operations against Iran – steps that led to the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.”
Yedioth Ahronoth quoted Einav Tsinguker, mother of the detained occupation soldier Matan Tsinguker, as saying that the soldiers’ families’ greatest fear is that the “Israeli government will leave the kidnapped behind.”
“The prime minister is being blackmailed by extremists in his government who want to build settlements on the backs of those kidnapped. We need to end the war in exchange for reaching a comprehensive deal,” she added.
