{"id":32399,"date":"2019-02-09T00:23:23","date_gmt":"2019-02-09T00:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=32399"},"modified":"2019-02-09T00:23:23","modified_gmt":"2019-02-09T00:23:23","slug":"ready-to-bring-down-netanyahu-ex-general-stirs-hope-of-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=32399","title":{"rendered":"Ready to bring down Netanyahu, ex-general stirs hope of change"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nJERUSALEM: Former military chief Benny Gantz has burst onto Israel\u2019s political scene as the great hope of the country\u2019s shrinking \u201cpeace camp\u201d with a message that is anything but dovish.<\/p>\n

\nThe retired general, who wants to topple Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in April 9 elections, boasts of killing Palestinian militants and aligns himself with political hard-liners. He fires back at Netanyahu\u2019s criticism with scathing counterattacks.<\/p>\n

\nIn today\u2019s Israel, Gantz\u2019s ready-to-rumble rhetoric appears to be the only way to bring down the long-serving Netanyahu. That is turning him into an unlikely source of hope for Israelis who view ending their country\u2019s rule over the Palestinians, now in its 51st year, as a priority.<\/p>\n

\nYossi Beilin, an architect of the 1993 interim peace accords with the Palestinians, said fear of another Netanyahu term is driving much of the support for Gantz. He called Gantz a \u201cblack dove\u201d \u2014 an imperfect but tolerable alternative to Netanyahu.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cNot that I agree with everything he says, but many of the things he is saying are OK from my point of view,\u201d Beilin said.<\/p>\n

\nOpinion polls forecast victory for Netanyahu\u2019s Likud Party. But since Gantz\u2019s recent maiden political speech, his new \u201cIsrael Resilience\u201d party has emerged as No. 2.<\/p>\n

\nThe race could swing in the challenger\u2019s favor. Netanyahu faces possible indictment in a series of corruption investigations, perhaps before the elections. Meanwhile, Gantz is reportedly exploring mergers with other centrist parties.<\/p>\n

\nGantz appears to be modeling himself after Ehud Barak and the late Yitzhak Rabin \u2014 former military chiefs-turned-prime ministers. Both used military credentials to lead security-obsessed Israel to peace negotiations with the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

\nWary of being branded a \u201cleftist,\u201d considered a put-down by many Israelis, Gantz has said little about his vision of peace with the Palestinians. He dresses his rhetoric in security terms as he tries to win support from Netanyahu\u2019s nationalist base.<\/p>\n

\nIn his January speech, Gantz bragged about assassinating Ahmed Jabari, a former Hamas military commander whose death in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip sparked an eight-day war in 2012.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cThe heads of the terrorist organizations need to know that Ahmed Jabari was not the first, nor may he be the last,\u201d Gantz warned.<\/p>\n

\nWithout giving details, he vowed to \u201cstrive for peace\u201d and \u2014 if that is impossible \u2014 to shape a \u201cnew reality.\u201d He said he\u2019d strengthen West Bank settlement blocs and retain control of the Jordan Valley, a strategic section of the occupied West Bank the Palestinians seek as the heartland of a future state.<\/p>\n

\nThe UN has said about two-thirds of more than 2,100 Palestinians killed in the 2014 war were civilians.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JERUSALEM: Former military chief Benny Gantz has burst onto Israel\u2019s political scene as the great hope of the country\u2019s shrinking \u201cpeace camp\u201d with a message that is anything but dovish. The retired general, who wants to topple Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in April 9 elections, boasts of killing Palestinian militants and aligns himself with political…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":32400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}