Ehud Barak
Photo: AP
Barak: Threat to south unacceptable
Defense minister, Deputy PM Shalom butt heads during cabinet meeting over tensions in south
Sunday's government turned heated Sunday as the tensions on the Gaza border translated into tensions among the ministers.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began the meeting by informing the minister that he, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz and Shin Bet Chief Yuval Diskin, were formulating Israel's strategy vis-à-vis Hamas' aggression.
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During the cabinet meeting, Vice Premier Silvan Shalom criticized Barak for differentiating between Hamas' political and military wings.
"There is no reason for this differentiation. The two are the same," he said. "It took me a long time to convince the international community to include Hamas on their terror watch lists. There is no place for this differentiation," he said.
Shalom made his statements after Barak made a differentiation between the two wings. "You have the military wing that shoots and the political wing that talks," he said. After Shalom criticized him he responded: "That isn't precisely what I meant. I'm not exactly distinguishing between the two, you misunderstood. There is a political wing and there is a military wing but that doesn't mean that there is any room to distinguish between the two."
"As far as we're concerned, Hamas is responsible for everything in the strip and all the organizations that operate there," Barak said. "We will not accept any activities that harm our citizens, actions such as firing at a bus or attempts to put 750,000 citizens in bomb shelters.
The defense minister also addressed the newly deployed Iron Dome system and said: "The system is an important achievement. It intercepted eight out of nine rockets that were set to hit residential areas."
The Head of the Knesset foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz also addressed recent events in the south during Sunday's committee meeting. He called on the government to strive for an agreement with the Palestinian Authority and not to hide behind the successes of the Iron Dome system.
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