Israeli Press
Haaretz blames the opposition for silence as Netanyahu buries the Gaza roadmap
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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The editorial board of Haaretz charged Israel's opposition on Tuesday with saying nothing while Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the 15-point roadmap for Gaza's future.
Netanyahu announced this week that Israel refuses the document and that the army will not withdraw from Gaza before what he called a real disarmament of Hamas, down to its light weapons. As long as he is prime minister, he said, no Palestinian state will arise, "not in Gaza and not in the West Bank".
The editorial reads the timing as election arithmetic. On its account, Netanyahu is talking past the world to his base, out to persuade it that no one stands further right on the Palestinians, and to appease Itamar Ben Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and Orit Strock at his cabinet table.
The sharper charge lands on the parties trying to replace him. They attack the war's management and warn of the international price, the editors write, yet not one of their leaders said a word about the roadmap's rejection — and none will answer who should govern Gaza, who rebuilds it, who guarantees its people's safety, or what ties Gaza to the occupied West Bank.
On the West Bank the editorial finds the same vacancy while settlement entrenches itself — settlers assaulted a Haaretz crew a day earlier — and it closes on a warning: the last three years proved this conflict cannot be pushed to the margins.
