26m video interview. Blurb:
“Netanyahu is history, he’s done,” Ehud Olmert told DW. He called the current Israeli leaders “violent, messianic thugs” and said that long term, Palestinians must be able to “exercise their right to self-determination.” The center-right politician and former prime minister added that there was no alternative to the two-state solution with the Palestinians. On the issue of the scores of Israelis taken hostage by Hamas, Olmert said there was “no basis for negotiation” with Hamas — since, in his view, the Islamist militant group was not interested in negotiations. Olmert also told host Tim Sebastian that he thought there was little likelihood of direct military action against Iran, even though Tehran had “coordinated” the attacks and that a derailment of a US-sponsored diplomatic and security accord between Israel and Saudi Arabia would serve Iran’s interests.
Not sure whether this counts as “news” in the strict sense but I think it does in the loose sense also I wouldn’t know where else to post it.
Not sure why these are mutually exclusive.
Booting the head of state during wartime leads to some transitional difficulties
Maybe. Hamas isn’t really an existential threat to Israel, it only appears so because of how horrifically Israeli security bungled this. The main activity of the military right now seems to be getting revenge by blowing up random buildings. Since it’s not clear how this makes Israel safer nor how Netanyahu is needed for that process anyway, I see no reason to delay his extremely long overdue removal from power.
It’s not really about Hamas being a real threat, I think it’s primarily PR. Changing the head of state like that causes uncertainty and chaos. Plus they’d probably want him to absorb maximum bad press that could otherwise be directed towards a successor.
For the people in power, keeping him there for now is ideal. Forcibly removing a head of state during wartime would cause obscene concern from how unusual it is, and some of them probably don’t even want him gone at all. Now if I was a potential successor I’d worry that he would somehow stay in power if the bad PR blew over, but pushing for his removal now is probably bad for your chances of seizing the seat.
This is of course from the perspective of opportunists in power. It’s rare for the people to override their wishes, especially in wartime where people typically rally around the head of state, so this is my thinking on why he’ll stay there. That said a handful of people really taking a stand could probably boot him.
Unlike scenarios aside I believe this time is better used establishing the narrative that he will be gone soon, with a definite end date or event. It’s almost impossible to get him out now, but it is possible to lay the groundwork that makes near-certain he’ll leave later.
There’s about 520k people in uniform right now (360k of those reservists), they’re not all sitting around at the Gaza wall but reinforcing all over the place so that e.g. Hezbollah doesn’t get any funny ideas.
In short: Everyone’s primary attention is to the outside right now. Once it’s clear that they won’t have to fight anyone else but Hamas and can relax a bit and can afford some internal sparks flying Netanyahu will be disposed of which could be in a couple of days. If they do have to fight it’s going to take a bit longer as politicians first negotiate some kind of national unity replacement government.
If people want to wait a few days until things are a little calmer then sure. But it’s going to take a lot longer than that to get rid of Hamas, if such a thing is even possible, so that’s what I’m responding to.
Personally I doubt he’ll be removed at all. Probably depends on how the media narrative evolves and how obvious security failures were.