Ex-Israeli prime minister says military suffering manpower shortages
Naftali Bennett says the Israeli military has been “stretched beyond its limits” with the fighting in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, the Jordan Valley, Lebanon, Syria and the Sinai over the past year and a half.
“Never have we been required to manage so many borders and soldiers,” he said, in a lengthy post on X. “At this moment, the [Israeli army] is short 20,000 soldiers.”
Bennett called on the government to further lift restrictions on enlisting ultra-orthodox Jewish Israelis to help alleviate pressure on other reservists, which he said includes his son. In January, the Israeli military enlisted 338 ultra-Orthodox Jews, after the Supreme Court ruled there was no legal ground for previous exemptions.
Israel, states that supply it with weapons ‘must be stopped’: UN special rapporteur
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory, has called for an end to arms transfers to Israel.
“Seriously, how many children, along with their parents and grandparents, we must witness being starved, burned alive, or gathered into plastic bags after Western-manufactured bombs have shattered them?” she said in a social media post.
Several Western countries have continued to supply lethal weapons to Israel despite the enormous human toll caused by its war on the Palestinian enclave. The US, Israel’s closest ally, has supplied the bulk of weaponry, including 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs.
“Israel must be stopped, and so [should] the states supplying it with weapons,” Albanese wrote.
