Opposition lawmakers and local officials sharply criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday after he addressed the emerging agreement between the United States and Iran, denied that Israel’s war aim had been to remove the Iranian existential threat and said the goal had been only to push it away.
Former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, chairman of the Yashar party, said Netanyahu would have been better off admitting failure.
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Former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot and Opposition Leader Yair Lapid
(Photo: Moti Kimchi)
“It would have been better for him to say, ‘I was wrong, I inflated false goals that I was not prepared to achieve,’” Eisenkot said. “That would have given Netanyahu much more credit and respect from the people if he had admitted that he made empty declarations and carried out consciousness campaigns.”
Instead, Eisenkot said, Israelis heard “the same declarations that are once again an illusion, a denial of goals he had previously declared, and above all, zero real answers to a people who have gone through the hardest years in their history.”
“Iran will continue to be a bitter enemy that we will continue to act against and thwart,” he added. “This is not politics. These are the lives of people who work, fight and survive. The discourse must be changed to one that is honest, straight and not driven by the pursuit of power.”
Opposition leader Yair Lapid also responded to Netanyahu’s remarks, writing on X: “A suggestion for Netanyahu: You can claim that we are a superpower and one step away from regional control, you can claim that we are in danger of annihilation and one step away from mass death, but not both, and certainly not within a minute. Israel is a strong country with a weak government. That is its main problem, and we will solve it in the coming months.”
Democrats chairman Yair Golan said: “If you devoted most of your life to fighting the Iranian threat, and according to you we came a short distance from annihilation, then you failed in your life’s mission. We appreciate the honesty.”
Netanyahu said at his press conference that he knew exactly what he had defined as the goal: “to create the conditions that will help the Iranian people overthrow the regime.” But the Prime Minister’s Office website still shows his February 28 statement on launching an operation “to remove the existential threat.”
In his remarks, delivered amid criticism in Israel of the emerging deal between Washington and Tehran, Netanyahu said: “With an agreement, without an agreement, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. We saved Israel from the threat of annihilation.”
MK Naama Lazimi responded to Netanyahu’s claim that after the October 7 attacks he had set a simple principle that Israel would not allow terror organizations to entrench themselves on its borders.
“You cannot make up this madness,” she wrote. “He funded a terror organization that wants to destroy us, and remembered after a massacre on a biblical scale that this is not good.”
Metula Mayor David Azulay also criticized Netanyahu’s statement, saying he had listened closely and was stunned by “the passion of the statements, the promises, and above all, the ongoing neglect of Israeli citizens.”
Metula, a town on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, has been heavily affected by the war and the fighting with Hezbollah.
“We, the citizens of Israel, have been in a bloody war for almost three years, which began with murder and the second Holocaust as a result of the policy of containment and the entry of Qatari money into Gaza,” Azulay said. He said the war had continued on multiple fronts with major achievements by the people of Israel and the IDF, but that those military achievements had not been translated into diplomatic results.
“I invite the prime minister to see up close the destruction of the communities, the population, the abandonment, the residents suffering from post-trauma,” Azulay said. “We would be happy to host the prime minister, so he can hear that children hid under tables during sirens.”
“Our luck is not the government of Israel and the person leading it, but this amazing people that mobilized and is bringing military achievements,” he added. “When we are managing rehabilitation with about 70% of the budget coming from donations, it shows how disconnected the government and the person leading it are.”
Azulay called it “another black and sad day” for citizens of Israel and the Galilee, saying residents were preparing for the next round and hoping there would not be “an October 7 here in the north.”
Before Netanyahu’s press conference, former prime minister Naftali Bennett held one of his own.
“The term of Netanyahu’s government began with civil war, continued with the October 7 massacre, and is ending with a historic failure against Iran,” Bennett said.
“In the 1,000-day war, the people of Israel, IDF soldiers and all branches of the security establishment showed the entire world extraordinary heroism and breathtaking ingenuity that will still be studied in history books,” he said. “But the leadership disappointed.”
Asked what he would have done differently, Bennett replied: “Everything.”
“Diplomatically, I would have used my credit with the most sympathetic president we have ever had in history solely for the interest of the State of Israel, for you,” he said. “Militarily, I would return to the security concept of quick, strong and decisive wars, instead of Netanyahu’s strategy of dragging things out, which exhausts the soldiers, the economy and the home front that has suffered so much.”
Bennett also said he would have rebuilt the national public diplomacy headquarters that he said he established as prime minister and that the current government later dismantled. He said he would not have allowed “TikTok ministers” to cause public diplomacy disasters “left and right.”
Domestically, Bennett said he would impose mandatory military service on all Israelis, stop funding draft evasion and bring the IDF the tens of thousands of soldiers it lacks.
“When soldiers are missing, you have to capture the same point again and again, and that is how you cannot win,” he said.
“The stopwatch for replacing the regime in Iran will start the moment the government in Israel is replaced,” Bennett said. “Soon, the people of Israel will choose a new, energetic and determined leadership that will restore security to Israel. One that will care for you, the citizens of Israel, with all its heart.”