Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has wasted billions of shekels in planning an
operation against the Iranian nuclear threat, former prime minister Ehud Olmert
suggested on Friday.
In the past two years we have spent more than NIS 11
billion on “security hallucinations that were not performed and will not be
performed,” Olmert said, speaking in an interview to Channel 2.
He said
that there was a surplus in the defense budget that should be cut, but that
politicians were not willing to discuss this possibility in the lead-up to an
election.
Olmert said the stalled peace process with the Palestinians
should be the central issue being debated in the election campaign and that the
candidates were not addressing the issue.
He criticized Labor chairwoman
Shelly Yacimovich specifically, saying that she had once been a supporter of the
Hadash party, which supports withdrawing to the pre- 1967 lines, but was now a
“supporter of the settlers.”
The former prime minister said that as long
as the peace process remained stalled, Israel’s situation would become
increasingly difficult, the country would become further isolated and ties with
the US would become increasingly strained.
Olmert reiterated his support
for Kadima chairman Shaul Mofaz in the current election, saying that he had
never left the party.
Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan
responded on Saturday night, saying that if Olmert did not think Iran was a
serious threat to Israel, he was gravely mistaken.