Israel’s opposition leader Benny Gantz called on the government to “concentrate” on escalating against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Amid increasing tensions between Israel and Hezbollah in recent weeks, National Unity party leader Benny Gantz called on the Netanyahu government to focus on Hezbollah and escalate on the militia group.
Asserting that Hamas ‘is old news’ and that ‘Hezbollah is the real issue’, the Israeli opposition leader said Tel Aviv should “concentrate” on raging a big war 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, especially Hezbollah” are “the real issue.”
“The time of the north has come and actually I think we are late on this,” he also noted. 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.
Speaking at a forum in Washington, DC this Thursday, Gantz then rebuked Israel’s decisions to quickly evacuation of tens of thousands of settlers from the northern border with Lebanon, calling it “a bad 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, and we are capable of hitting the state of Lebanon if needed,” Gantz also said.
Likewise, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also called for an escalation against Lebanon a day earlier on Wednesday. “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.
Will Gantz replace Netanyahu?
For months, debates about Gantz being a favorable replacement for Netanyahu as Israel’s next prime minister have been circling mostly in Washington. This is especially due to the growing disagreements between the Biden administration and Netanyahu mostly over the war in Gaza.
In early June, Gantz withdrew from Israel’s war cabinet in protest against what he saw as 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.
Gantz has also often been presented by western media outlets as a more “moderate” Israeli political figure that can be a good choice to end Netanyahu’s era in power. His recent comments about escalating tensions with Hezbollah, however, can endanger this picture of him.
