Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been “destroyed emotionally” by his failure to prevent the 7 October Hamas attack and is now miscalculating by preparing to take overall control of Gaza’s security for an “indefinite period” if the Palestinian resistance group is defeated in Gaza, according to former Israeli leader Ehud Olmert.
Netanyahu is widely blamed by Israelis for the Hamas attack, in which 1,400 Israelis were killed and 240 taken captive. Many Israelis cite the slow response of the army and police, which in some settlements near Gaza took hours, while Israeli eyewitnesses have said the Israeli army itself killed many civilians in an effort to prevent Hamas taking them captive back to Gaza.
In an interview with US news outlet Politico, Olmert claimed Netanyahu was in a state of “nervous breakdown,” for fear of being removed from office due to the failure.
“He’s being squeezed from all sides and his focus seems to be stopping being thrown out of office the day the war stops and even maybe before then,” he said.
“You expect him now to talk about the second phase and the third phase. He’s not certain he will survive politically this phase,” Olmert added.
“[Netanyahu] has shrunk. He’s destroyed emotionally, that’s for sure. I mean, something terrible happened to him. Bibi has been working all his life on the false pretense that he is Mr. Security. He’s Mr. Bullshit,” Olmert said. “Every minute he is prime minister he is a danger to Israel. I seriously mean it. I am certain the Americans understand he is in bad shape.”
Olmert warned Netanyahu is therefore making a strategic mistake by planning to take direct control over Gaza should Israel successfully defeat Hamas. Israel has been bombarding Gaza for over a month, killing over 10,800 Palestinians, the majority women and children. On 27 October, Israel also launched ground operations into the strip. Hamas has killed 35 Israeli soldiers inside Gaza so far.
In an interview with ABC News on Monday, Netanyahu stated his intention to take control of Gaza in a manner similar to the period before 2005, when Israel occupied the small coastal enclave directly, rather than just controlling it from the outside through a military siege and economic blockade.
Olmert led Israel from 2006 to 2009 as head of the Kadima party.
Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005 was planned by Olmert when he was part of Ariel Sharon’s government in the early 2000s, and implemented just before Sharon’s stroke put Olmert allowed him to become prime minister.
“It’s not in Israel’s interests to oversee the security of Gaza,” he said. “It is in our interests to be able to defend ourselves in a different way than we did before the October 7 attack. But to control Gaza again? No.”
Other segments of Israeli society, in particular the religious settler movement, wish to use the war against Hamas to expel Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and annex the strip, as proposed recently by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence. They wish to reestablish the Gush Katif settlement bloc in Gaza that was dismantled during the 2005 disengagement.
Netanyahu’s approval ratings have plummeted since the attack. Recent polling shows that 76 percent of Israelis want him out of office and that 44 percent hold Netanyahu responsible for what happened on 7 October.
In a further sign of Netanyahu’s unpopularity, Israel Hayom, a traditionally pro-Netanyahu newspaper, said Wednesday he should step aside, writing: “Take responsibility and accept that the buck stops with you.”