Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses State Control Committee. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)
Parents of bereaved soldiers interrupted Netanyahu while he was addressing the Knesset’s State Control Committee on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended his performance during his launching of Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in the summer of 2014 at a meeting of the Knesset’s State Control committee on Wednesday.
“Hamas didn’t achieve any of its goals,” Netanyahu stated.
“We threatened Hamas until Hamas’ military begged its foreign political leadership to agree to a ceasefire and told them, ‘we can’t continue any more!'” Netanyahu said.
“According to intelligence, Hamas geared up for a wide-scale operation with the aim of lifting the maritime blockade on Gaza,” Netanyahu added. “It planned a combined attack from the air, firing thousands of missiles on Israeli cities and from the sea, through naval commando raids and from underground by using dozens of tunnels.”
Netanyahu addressed the committee approximately a month and a half after the State Comptroller released a report that criticized Israel’s political echelon, including the prime minister and then Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, for having been significantly unprepared in the months leading up to Operation Protective Edge.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Netanyahu insisted that Israel dealt its best with the cards presented and that there were “very few options with a murderous regime like Hamas.”
The bereaved parents of some of the 68 soldiers who were killed during Operation Protective Edge however, were demonstrably unsatisfied with Netanyahu’s answers . At various points during the meeting, the parents interrupted the prime minister, with one parent accusing him of “turning us (bereaved parents) into enemies of the state.”
During the meeting, Netanyahu also revealed that US President Barack Obama originally told Netanyahu not to send ground forces into Gaza during Operation Protective Edge.
“(Obama) told me, ‘I am asking you not to send in ground forces,’ and I said, ‘I will do my best not to send them in, but if this continues, and the tunnels continue to threaten us, we will have no choice but to go in,'” Netanyahu said.
By: Jonathan Benedek, World Israel News
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