Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday night attacked the ostensible security positions of former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, casting his rising election rival as too politically cautious to have ordered key operations that, the premier says, have reshaped the battlefield against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Asked at a press conference to respond to recent criticism by Eisenkot of his handling of Lebanon, Netanyahu argued that the Yashar party leader and his political allies had opposed key wartime moves, including the IDF’s entry into Gaza’s Rafah, its seizure of the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border, and its expanded operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Eisenkot, then part of Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party, joined Netanyahu’s coalition to form an emergency government after the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack and served in the war cabinet until he resigned in June 2024 in protest of Netanyahu’s handling of the war.

“I remember what Gadi Eisenkot said, and what others said, when we were still in Gaza.… They said we should stop while we were still in Khan Younis,” Netanyahu said. “Not enter Rafah. Not take control of the Philadelphi Corridor. They said we should simply make a deal, bring out the hostages, and leave Gaza – leave all of Gaza. And then, two or three years later, we could come back to it.”

Following that advice, Netanyahu claimed, would have meant that “all of Hamas” and top officials assassinated by Israel during the war “would still be there, still alive, still in control.”

Netanyahu claimed this also would have prevented the IDF from expanding operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon, as it did in late 2024, nearly a year after the Lebanese terror group first began attacking Israel in support of Hamas.

“It also means that we never would have entered Lebanon at all. We would not have carried out the [2024 beeper] operation,” he continued. “We would not have eliminated [former Hezbollah leader Nassan] Nasrallah. We would not have destroyed 90 percent of Hezbollah’s missile stockpile.”

“We would have left all of Radwan Force’s terror tunnels right here on the border,” Netanyahu continued, referring to the........

© The Times of Israel