Gabbay criticizes PM for UN decision

In the hours after the UN vote on Thursday, the only MKs who criticized Netanyahu and not just the UN were in the Joint List.

By GIL HOFFMAN
Updated: DECEMBER 24, 2017 00:57
AVI GABBAY: Now there are almost no attacks, and there unfortunately is also no diplomatic process (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
AVI GABBAY: Now there are almost no attacks, and there unfortunately is also no diplomatic process
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
A day after Zionist Union chairman Avi Gabbay responded to the General Assembly decision condemning the United States for committing to move its embassy to Jerusalem by attacking only the UN, Gabbay blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech on Friday.
Speaking to a security forum of the Labor Party (the main constituent of the Zionist Union), Gabbay said there was a difference between Netanyahu being welcomed in capitals around the world, and the world agreeing to Netanyahu’s request to recognize our capital. He said the prime minister made a mistake by relying too much on relations with the US and not doing enough to advance a diplomatic process with the Palestinians.
“For a decade we have had a government that is frozen and leadership that is frozen and does not offer us a different future,” Gabbay said. “You can take a picture with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with or without shoes, but it won’t change the fact that the world is not ready to see us continuing to rule another people. Western nations are willing to watch Syrians slaughter other Syrians, and Iraqis kill Iraqis, because they have no expectations of them. But they are not ready to see people with their democratic values rule over another nation.”
In the hours after the UN vote on Thursday, the only MKs who criticized Netanyahu and not just the UN were in the Joint List.
Other Zionist Union leaders criticized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for announcing that he will no longer accept any peace plan offered by the US.
Speaking at the same event as Gabbay, opposition leader Isaac Herzog said Abbas’s announcement was dangerous for both Israelis and Palestinians.
“This is a bad mistake by Abbas, which will serve only the extremists,” MK Tzipi Livni said. “Israel must advance separation from the Palestinians, with or without them, instead of remaining connected to them forever. That is in Israel’s interests.”