Haaretz newspaper said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his effort to evade responsibility for the events of October 7, is now trying to place blame for the disaster on his former predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin, by linking all mistakes to the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, and removing all causes of failure from politics. Which he followed during his long tenure as Prime Minister.
The newspaper indicated – in its editorial – that Netanyahu continued to reject, during the many years he spent in power, all attempts to reach a regional settlement and separate Israel from the Palestinians, without being ashamed to brag about the Abraham Accords and the fantasy of normalization with Saudi Arabia, as if that were possible if it were not for Oslo. Even the economic growth for which he is credited would not have been possible without the Oslo Accords and the peace agreement with Jordan.
Instead of resigning in shame and acknowledging his responsibility for the October disaster and the collapse of his policies – as the newspaper says – Netanyahu shamelessly continues to deliver diplomatic speeches, as if the killing of 1,200 Israelis and the capture of 240 others is not conclusive evidence that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be erased from the agenda. .
Avoid blame
The newspaper concluded that Netanyahu is not dealing with “the next day” for Israel and Gaza, but rather, as an expert in avoiding blame, he knows that he must find another culprit to be acquitted by the “jury” in a government investigation committee into the October 7 disaster.
Haaretz concluded that this is how we should understand Netanyahu’s statements this week before the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the Knesset, when he said, “The Oslo Accords are a disaster that brought us the same number of victims as the surprise Hamas attack.”
She said that when he explained his attack on the Palestinian Authority, “the only difference between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority is that Hamas wants to destroy us now, and the Palestinian Authority wants to do it in stages.”