Opposition leader Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) slammed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his address at the Monday Knesset winter session opening ceremony, and stated ahead of it that the only way to defeat Hamas was to have Egypt manage the Gaza Strip.
In a faction press conference ahead of the opening ceremony, Lapid remarked on Israel's recent ceasefire deal with Hamas.
“The only way to prevent Hamas from reasserting control over Gaza is to bring Egypt in properly, to lead the management of Gaza," Lapid said.
“For more than a year, I have said to this government: if you do not propose an alternative authority in Gaza, Hamas will return, and the world will impose on us a solution we do not want,” Lapid added,
Criticizing Netanyahu, Lapid said that rather than bringing in Egypt, "a country that fights the Muslim Brotherhood’s terrorism, the government brought Turkey and Qatar into Gaza, the ideological partners of the Muslim Brotherhood."
Lapid presses for Egypt to control Gaza
“What Gaza needs is Egyptian control. We must secure assurances from the Americans that Turkey and Qatar will not be part of it. "
"We must stop playing games with humanitarian aid. This whole process of stopping aid and then renewing it is not serious; it lacks strategy, and it only hurts us. It helps Hamas," he added.
“Hamas has not been defeated because Netanyahu does not know how to defeat it. The way to defeat it is to bring in an effective Egyptian authority in its place and to conduct a sustained military and diplomatic effort, with the understanding that we will not stop until Hamas is destroyed, even if it takes time," Lapid explained.
Later, during the Knesset opening ceremony, Netanyahu had remarked on Israel’s current economic success, to which Lapid expressed his fierce objection during his plenum speech at the ceremony.
“I understand that you are excited about the economic success after two credit rating downgrades, the first in the history of the state, and after three consecutive years of negative growth. That’s the economic achievement?" Lapid questioned Netanyahu.
“I know you don’t go to the supermarket, that’s fine,” Lapid added.
“Ask someone about the state of the Israeli middle class, people who work, while you maintain 15 completely unnecessary government ministries here, transfer billions in coalition funding, all at the expense of people who work, pay taxes, and perform reserve duty this year," Lapid said.