Opposition leaders accuse Netanyahu of sabotaging Gaza talks
Netanyahu’s political opponents have accused him of sabotaging negotiations to reach a captive-prisoner exchange deal with Hamas.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid, a former prime minister and leader of the Yesh Atid party, said the government has imposed new conditions.
“We have nothing left to achieve in Gaza; we need to start preparing for the day after the war and bring back 100 hostages,” he told the public broadcaster Kan.
“Once the war ends, we can return to Gaza and do what we need to do,” he said. “Now, we need to stop the war and finalise a deal to bring all the hostages back.”
Lapid said Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Gaza, does not want to end the war, fearing that it would lead to his government’s collapse.
Avigdor Lieberman, a former defence minister and leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, also criticised Netanyahu. He told the Maariv newspaper “the deal can be done”.
There was no immediate response from Netanyahu’s office.
70 percent of Jabalia camp’s buildings completely destroyed: Report
According to a report by Haaretz, which briefly had access to the camp in besieged northern Gaza, the number is an estimate by the Israeli army.
The Israeli daily said Jabalia refugee camp has become a “ghost town” during the Israeli army’s continuous attacks on the area.
None of the army’s other operations in Lebanon and other parts of Gaza “can compare, in the scale of the destruction, to what has happened over the last two and a half months” in the camp.
According to the army’s data, quoted by Haaretz, some 96,000 Palestinian civilians were forcibly displaced from the densely populated camp during the military’s operation.
The newspaper added, citing the army, that more than 2,000 Palestinians have been killed and roughly 1,500 have been arrested in the camp over the same period.
The army claims most of the people killed in the camp were armed, the report also said.
Rubble surrounds a home after it was hit in an Israeli attack on the Jabalia refugee camp on November 7
That while less than 1.5% of the population were part of Hamas fighters, a fraction of that again involved in Oct 7.
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