PM: 'All options are on the table' regarding Iran

"We will make every effort to recruit the international community," statement from Netanyahu says.

By LAHAV HARKOV
PM Netanyahu, Deputy PM Yaalon_311 (photo credit: Reuters)
PM Netanyahu, Deputy PM Yaalon_311
(photo credit: Reuters)
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that “all options are on the table,” in a written response to a Knesset discussion on “the dilemma of attacking Iran.”
“We will make every effort to recruit the international community. Nonetheless, Israel would like to make clear that all options are on the table,” Netanyahu wrote in a response read in the Knesset plenum by Government Services Minister Michael Eitan.
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MKs Eitan Cabel (Labor), Zehava Gal-On (Meretz) and Zevulun Orlev (Habayit Hayehudi) initiated the urgent motion for the agenda on whether or not to attack the Islamic Republic, following an IAEA report that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and media reports of former senior security officials encouraging an offensive.
“The prime minister and defense minister have talked themselves to death on this topic, and then they cried about people talking too much,” Cabel said. “They accuse us, the MKs, of leaking information, but I don’t know any MKs that are in touch with journalists in Kuwait.”
“The talk is coming from the top of the pyramid,” the Labor MK stated.
According to Gal-On, “public discourse on this issue is essential. The public is not a herd. There are things it must hear.”
“The last three wars were optional, and there was no public discourse,” she explained. “The governments acted irresponsibly, and it ended in inquiry committees.”
Orlev said that, in his opinion, there is no dilemma.
“The State of Israel cannot allow itself to live under a nuclear threat from a state whose leaders declare openly that they plan to destroy us,” he stated. “This isn’t a discussion in the plenum or in the newspaper headlines about how to do it, and we hope the world will take care of the problem, but experience shows us that we cannot rely on the world.”
Orlev continued: “If the world does not act, we cannot sit with our hands folded. However, we cannot talk about how to attack, because if the State of Israel reaches the conclusion that it will do what it will do, no one needs to know about it.”
“In today’s world, we cannot prevent a public discussion,” Eitan said. “People want to give their opinions.”
“At the same time, there’s a difference between the public and former and current officials, who received information because of their position,” he explained. “A public servant who received information because of his job must measure every word and examine them using tools like the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the Attorney-General and others.”
“There is a way to do things according to conscience, but without breaking the rules,” Eitan pointed out.