Opposition leader Yair Lapid said on Monday that there was no productive strategy behind Israel’s attacks on Iran, arguing that the country was failing to achieve its military objectives while continuing to draw its citizens into repeated rounds of conflict.
His remarks came at a Knesset press conference on Monday, after the escalation between Iran and Israel began late on Sunday evening, causing a nationwide school shutdown to be announced for Monday. Later in the evening, it was announced that the Home Front Command had eased restrictions.
While Lapid said that he had once expressed support for the Iran war, he criticized the current round of fighting, saying that it “serves no strategic objective of the State of Israel.”
“When war is forced upon us, we must strike with overwhelming and disproportionate force. But war alone cannot become our automatic response to every problem,” Lapid said.
He also noted that it was clear from Iran’s announcement about its launches that Israel’s past operation “did not advance the overthrow of the regime, did not advance the elimination of the ballistic missile program, and did not advance the elimination of the nuclear program.”
“The government is sending its citizens to sit in shelters, the economy is paralyzed, and there is no strategic objective behind all of this that anyone can understand, including people within the security establishment,” he noted.
Lapid also said that the country’s citizens, living in a democracy, were “entitled to know why they are being asked to make sacrifices.”
“What is the objective? What is the optimal outcome? What are the risks? What was the decision-making process?” he queried. “The government has not explained the purpose of the current round of fighting, not because it is a secret, but because it has no explanation.”
MK Liberman asserts that Israel needs new plan of attack against Iran
Other opposition party leaders also sharply criticized the government’s conduct amid regional tensions.
Yisrael Beytenu leader MK Avidgor Liberman said at his faction’s press conference in the Knesset that Israel required a decisive outcome, and that to achieve it, a new plan of attack against Iran must be created.
Liberman argued that the solution to Iranian threats against Israel was to strike Kharg Island severely.
He said Israel should state that it “will destroy every piece of infrastructure and every facility located there, thereby stopping 90% of Iranian exports.”
“We will sink Kharg Island into the sea. If you go crazy, we know how to go crazier,” Liberman said. “The State of Israel has been in a war of attrition for nearly three years. This is now the third round of confrontation with Iran. We must move to a strategy of decisive victory.”
Golan blames Netanyahu's weakness for Iran strikes
Leader of the left-wing Democrats party, Yair Golan, made remarks against the government during a visit to the North. He argued that the attacks against Israel were caused because the country’s enemies saw that “Israel has the weakest, most impaired, and most failed leader in its history.”
“Because of [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s weakness, they attack us,” Golan said.
“Our enemies saw how Hamas survived and remained in power. Israel has been losing, from October 7 to today, because of Netanyahu. In the eyes of our enemies, Hamas’s survival in power after the massacre is proof of [Israel’s] weakness.”
Leader of the Arab Hadash-Tal party, Ayman Odeh, meanwhile, called on the fighting to be halted and urged that a political agreement be concluded with Iran.
He said a political agreement was needed “that ensures security for all peoples of the region and respects the national rights of the two peoples living in this land. We cannot continue to be afraid to tell the truth. We cannot continue to fall for the illusion that more and more wars will bring security,” he added.