Do Netanyahu’s Domestic Opponents Offer a Real Alternative?

I’ll give you the complex perspective. The point is that when you go into a war, or into anything else, you have to know how you start and you have to know where you want to end. We should have finished with a deal where the No. 1 priority was no uranium in the hands of the Iranians, and that didn’t happen. A second part should have been dealing with their ballistic missiles, and that is not happening. And then there should have been a big limit on the money that Iran is giving to its proxies, focussing on Hezbollah, but not only Hezbollah. We have reached none of those goals that Netanyahu laid out, and Iran is stronger in the region.

This is all proving that our side hasn’t shown the Americans what the effect of the Iranian threat is.

Right, the reason this deal is so favorable to Iran may be, in a small way, because Donald Trump or Jared Kushner or Steve Witkoff are not good negotiators, but broadly speaking it is because Iran had shown, because of the war, that it could control the Strait of Hormuz. Maybe they decided to do that in part because the Israeli assassination campaign made them feel like they had nothing left to lose. And so the Americans, and thus the Israelis, were just not in a good bargaining position. So isn’t the bad deal a consequence of the war in the first place?

It is, and I think if this possibility was not taken into account before the war that’s a big failure. And if it was taken into account, and yet those are the results, it’s even a bigger failure. So, again, Israel made a heroic attack on Iran, and it’s the right thing to do to attack Iran in order to take out the ballistic missiles, and the nuclear forces. Those goals are all right. But if, at the end of the war and another three months of negotiations, you’re back at step one, that opens a big question mark about why we went to war. And why didn’t we achieve our goals? Now, Hormuz was always there. Didn’t Netanyahu know that? Some people in Israel say Netanyahu, in a way, deceived Trump. I don’t know if that’s true. But what I am saying, as an opposition leader, is not that I don’t think the attack on Iran was right. It was the right thing to do. But, if you don’t have a way to reach your goals at the end of it, you’ve done something wrong, you’ve gone the wrong way.

I thought you said that, in hindsight, you think the war with Israel’s various enemies should have stopped last October.

But again, again, Iran was making progress on its nuclear programs, and the building of missiles was going on. So the fact that we decided to attack Iran could be the right decision.

It could be?

But it would only be right if you achieve your goals. But if you attack and you don’t achieve your goals then maybe the right decision is not to attack. But the No. 1 goal is keeping Iran from having nuclear weapons and missiles and arming their proxies. If you can’t do those things, you should have done it differently or not done it. But if you spend a lot of money and get your citizens killed, you expect to achieve something.

Do you think it would be helpful for people in the Israeli political scene, like yourself, who are opposed to Netanyahu, to just say the country needs more diplomacy, and that constant war, even if sometimes militarily successful, is not the best route for Israel in the long term?

I agree with that totally. But I’m not saying no more war, no more bloodshed, or that we shouldn’t have attacked Iran. What I’m saying is, If we’re going to attack Iran in order to stop the nuclear program, etc., we must have achieved those goals, and we didn’t achieve them.

You said earlier that the deal might be good for the world and for America, but that that wasn’t the case for Israel. It does seem like a lot to ask the United States to continue fighting a war which you’re acknowledging is not good for the United States and the world, right? You talked about Israel’s diplomacy earlier. Isn’t part of the problem not just that Netanyahu is bad at diplomacy but that if your attitude is, This may be bad for the world but we’re gonna do it anyway, that’s not going to endear people to the state of Israel?

Look at the 28th of February. It looked like America and Israel had the same interests, and were playing their cards together. And that looked actually very good. And that’s the reason we in the opposition supported it. And yet now the fact that our interests and American interests are not the same is a failure, and I take it as our responsibility. I can’t blame America. I blame ourselves.

If you can’t finish your goals in Iran after six weeks of war, it’s our problem. I look to the leader of the country as the one who has to make this a success. He’s to blame. Now, what should have been done differently? I would have set the goals and worked together with Americans in a different manner, and I would have taken into account the Hormuz move made by the Iranians. There are many actions we didn’t take.

More broadly, going back to your early answers about how Israel had several years of great military success, but Netanyahu’s public diplomacy was lacking, and Israel’s reputation has fallen across the world. And when I talk to people who are opponents of Netanyahu but supportive of Israel, either in the United States or Israel, there’s this real focus on Netanyahu and his public diplomacy, and I agree it’s been very, very poor. But what about Israel’s actions themselves? You keep talking about military success, but if you look at the humanitarian results in Gaza and Lebanon, and Israel’s decision to cut off aid to Gaza, aren’t those the real reasons that Israel’s reputation is falling, rather than Netanyahu?

This is a new question, and I’ll give you a new answer, because you didn’t ask before about Gaza and Lebanon. Let’s focus on Gaza. I think after 7th of October, Israel had no option other than to act militarily and to attack Hamas. Some of the military operations against them were good and some were bad. And yet we had no option after the most deadly day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. And yet there were many mistakes made. One of them was a decision taken in March, 2src25, to block most or all of the aid, and that actually gave Hamas and Israel’s aggressors a lot of power, because, for several months, there was almost no food going into Gaza. So that was a mistake.