The opening day of the winter session of the Knesset was a scripted horror show, punctuated by a 40-minute interruption for legislators to find shelter, as Hamas rockets were fired from Gaza. None made it to Jerusalem, but, as described by the Times of Israel, all the deep-seated opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for now, has been put aside—at least within the Knesset.
TOI writes: “Israeli society has laser-focused itself on the war effort, with 300,000 reserve soldiers currently mobilized, in addition to Israel’s estimated 150,000- to 180,000-person standing army. As part of the war response, the Knesset is gearing up to delay nationwide municipal elections, which had originally been scheduled for Oct. 31. The plenum advanced a bill Monday [Oct. 16] to push the election, occurring once every five years, to Jan. 30, 2024.” The Knesset also moved on the plan by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to massively increase prison capacity.
The supposed Opposition Leader Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid party urged support for Netanyahu’s wartime cabinet and said that Israel will forge ahead even if it receives international criticism: “It will take time, it will require the use of a lot of force. If the world doesn’t like it, let it not. It was not the children of the world who were murdered; our children were murdered.”
To put a cap on it, Netanyahu, despite its being widely known that he had built up Hamas in order to undermine peace with Palestine, and also redeployed Israeli security away from Gaza just prior to the Hamas Oct. 7 attack, himself brought up the massive security failure, stating: “The reasons for the disaster that occurred will be investigated … and we have started drawing conclusions.”
As TOI observed: “Netanyahu, for his part, praised Israel’s newfound ‘unity.’”
