Do Netanyahu’s Domestic Opponents Offer a Real Alternative?

Q. & A.Do Netanyahu’s Domestic Opponents Offer a Real Alternative?Source photograph by Ronen Zvulun / ReutersSave this storySave this storySave this storySave this storyLast week, the United States and Iran agreed to a memorandum of understanding that will temporarily stop the war involving the two countries and Israel, and allow the sides to potentially negotiate a broader peace deal. The terms of the M.O.U., coming after Iran was able to close the Strait of Hormuz and harm the global economy, are very favorable to the Iranian regime, and have caused angst among hawks in Washington. But the backlash has been strongest in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been planning a fall reëlection campaign staked on his closeness to President Trump, and where an aggressive foreign policy toward Iran and Lebanon is popular across the Israeli political spectrum.I recently spoke by phone with Moshe Tur-Paz, a member of the Israeli Knesset from the Yesh Atid Party, the centrist grouping that is part of the alliance challenging Benjamin Netanyahu in the upcoming elections. Netanyahu’s opponents, even though they are overwhelmingly to his left, have largely attacked him from the right for not defeating the Iranian regime, or Hezbollah, and for allowing himself to be pushed around by Trump. During my conversation with Tur-Paz, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed whether the Israeli opposition’s Iran policies differ from Netanyahu’s, whether the war in Iran should ever have been started, and the ability of the opposition to rebuild Israel’s reputation abroad if it refuses to compromise with the Palestinians.How are people in Israel who consider themselves opponents of Netanyahu responding to the deal between the United States and Iran?There is a consensus in Israel, and not only within the opposition in Israel, that this is a big disappointment. The only range is between those who are surprised by the deal, and disappointed, and those like myself who thought that this is how it would be. We are soon reaching the three-year point of the war we have been fighting, the longest war since Israel was founded seventy-eight years ago. There are still missiles being fired at us. We have had two smaller wars with Iran within this longer three-year war. The military achievements are very high, but the diplomatic achievements are very low. And the government is in charge of that. So it’s a big disappointment.So you think the deal itself is bad?I think it’s a very bad deal for Israel. It’s a deal that serves the interests of the world and the United States, but not Israeli interests. But I had low expectations from Netanyahu, because I think he’s doing very bad diplomatic work. For a while, he seemed to be on the same page as Donald Trump, and that gave us a kind of advantage. But now we’re reaching a very disappointing point.So you are calling for better diplomacy, but at the same time you’re saying you don’t like it that Trump is stopping this war. Is there any tension there?I think they go together. My expectations were, after the 7th of October, that Israel would be fighting its enemies, defeating them, and getting a wide consensus in that effort from the world. Now, the first mission is a military mission, you know, a security mission, and it’s more professionalized. And then there’s the diplomatic mission, which is more focussed on government and diplomacy, which is led by the government. I think our army did very tactical good work on all sides of the war, and yet our achievements are not good enough. And that brings me to an understanding that we have reached a point at which the fighting isn’t reaching its goals, not because our fighters are not good enough, or our airplanes aren’t good enough, but because the government is doing a rotten job, and making bad strategic decisions. I do think we should have stopped the war last October. But if we were going to continue I expected it to have some higher achievements, but we’re not anywhere close to that.What happened in October?The strikes on the Iranian nuclear program were in June, and then we had our last hostage come home on the 13th of October, and we had another session in Lebanon, which was quite successful. And then I think we should have stopped the war. But Netanyahu was saying, No, we’re not satisfied with what’s going on with Gaza, we need more achievements in Lebanon, and Iran is still a threat, and then we said, O.K., so we started a session in Iran. If you’re working so closely with Donald Trump and the Americans, the ending should be a big success. And, instead, we have a worse deal. And that shows something that’s gone wrong in our diplomacy.O.K., but what was the alternative? To continue this war that you say wasn’t working? What I’m trying to understand is that it seems to me the Israeli opposition to Netanyahu is upset about the war ending. But many of those people, including yourself, don’t think it was succeeding.I’ll give you the complex perspective. The point is that when you go into a war, or into anything else, you have to know how you start and you have to know where you want to end. We should have finished with a deal where the No. 1 priority was no uranium in the hands of the Iranians, and that didn’t happen. A second part should have been dealing with their ballistic missiles, and that is not happening. And then there should have been a big limit on the money that Iran is giving to its proxies, focussing on Hezbollah, but not only Hezbollah. We have reached none of those goals that Netanyahu laid out, and Iran is stronger in the region.This is all proving that our side hasn’t shown the Americans what the effect of the Iranian threat is.Right, the reason this deal is so favorable to Iran may be, in a small way, because Donald Trump or Jared Kushner or Steve Witkoff are not good negotiators, but broadly speaking it is because Iran had shown, because of the war, that it could control the Strait of Hormuz. Maybe they decided to do that in part because the Israeli assassination campaign made them feel like they had nothing left to lose. And so the Americans, and thus the Israelis, were just not in a good bargaining position. So isn’t the bad deal a consequence of the war in the first place?It is, and I think if this possibility was not taken into account before the war that’s a big failure. And if it was taken into account, and yet those are the results, it’s even a bigger failure. So, again, Israel made a heroic attack on Iran, and it’s the right thing to do to attack Iran in order to take out the ballistic missiles, and the nuclear forces. Those goals are all right. But if, at the end of the war and another three months of negotiations, you’re back at step one, that opens a big question mark about why we went to war. And why didn’t we achieve our goals? Now, Hormuz was always there. Didn’t Netanyahu know that? Some people in Israel say Netanyahu, in a way, deceived Trump. I don’t know if that’s true. But what I am saying, as an opposition leader, is not that I don’t think the attack on Iran was right. It was the right thing to do. But, if you don’t have a way to reach your goals at the end of it, you’ve done something wrong, you’ve gone the wrong way.I thought you said that, in hindsight, you think the war with Israel’s various enemies should have stopped last October.But again, again, Iran was making progress on its nuclear programs, and the building of missiles was going on. So the fact that we decided to attack Iran could be the right decision.It could be?But it would only be right if you achieve your goals. But if you attack and you don’t achieve your goals then maybe the right decision is not to attack. But the No. 1 goal is keeping Iran from having nuclear weapons and missiles and arming their proxies. If you can’t do those things, you should have done it differently or not done it. But if you spend a lot of money and get your citizens killed, you expect to achieve something.Do you think it would be helpful for people in the Israeli political scene, like yourself, who are opposed to Netanyahu, to just say the country needs more diplomacy, and that constant war, even if sometimes militarily successful, is not the best route for Israel in the long term?I agree with that totally. But I’m not saying no more war, no more bloodshed, or that we shouldn’t have attacked Iran. What I’m saying is, If we’re going to attack Iran in order to stop the nuclear program, etc., we must have achieved those goals, and we didn’t achieve them.You said earlier that the deal might be good for the world and for America, but that that wasn’t the case for Israel. It does seem like a lot to ask the United States to continue fighting a war which you’re acknowledging is not good for the United States and the world, right? You talked about Israel’s diplomacy earlier. Isn’t part of the problem not just that Netanyahu is bad at diplomacy but that if your attitude is, This may be bad for the world but we’re gonna do it anyway, that’s not going to endear people to the state of Israel?Look at the 28th of February. It looked like America and Israel had the same interests, and were playing their cards together. And that looked actually very good. And that’s the reason we in the opposition supported it. And yet now the fact that our interests and American interests are not the same is a failure, and I take it as our responsibility. I can’t blame America. I blame ourselves.If you can’t finish your goals in Iran after six weeks of war, it’s our problem. I look to the leader of the country as the one who has to make this a success. He’s to blame. Now, what should have been done differently? I would have set the goals and worked together with Americans in a different manner, and I would have taken into account the Hormuz move made by the Iranians. There are many actions we didn’t take.More broadly, going back to your early answers about how Israel had several years of great military success, but Netanyahu’s public diplomacy was lacking, and Israel’s reputation has fallen across the world. And when I talk to people who are opponents of Netanyahu but supportive of Israel, either in the United States or Israel, there’s this real focus on Netanyahu and his public diplomacy, and I agree it’s been very, very poor. But what about Israel’s actions themselves? You keep talking about military success, but if you look at the humanitarian results in Gaza and Lebanon, and Israel’s decision to cut off aid to Gaza, aren’t those the real reasons that Israel’s reputation is falling, rather than Netanyahu?This is a new question, and I’ll give you a new answer, because you didn’t ask before about Gaza and Lebanon. Let’s focus on Gaza. I think after 7th of October, Israel had no option other than to act militarily and to attack Hamas. Some of the military operations against them were good and some were bad. And yet we had no option after the most deadly day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. And yet there were many mistakes made. One of them was a decision taken in March, 2025, to block most or all of the aid, and that actually gave Hamas and Israel’s aggressors a lot of power, because, for several months, there was almost no food going into Gaza. So that was a mistake.I think our military actions against Hezbollah were good, and some of the times were actually brilliant. We are now negotiating with the Lebanese government in Washington as we speak, and if we don’t come to an agreement that will weaken Hezbollah very much, and maybe build a new future for Israel and Lebanon together, I think that would be a big failure of diplomacy. So again, as I said, if you just look at our actions in war, most of the time Israel did well and right, but if you don’t put it in the context of taking care of the civilians and diplomacy and bringing the world with you, then you fail, as Netanyahu has done.Surely you’re aware that other things happened in the Gaza war besides the aid cutoff, and that are still happening, that turn people off about Israel’s behavior, mainly the killing of innocent civilians. You mentioned the aid cutoff, which was the most highlighted and blatant of these things, but it does seem like Israel needs a completely new way of dealing with the Palestinians and with its neighbors if it’s ever going to get out of this public-diplomacy pickle that it’s in, no?I think most Israeli military actions in Gaza were needed and were inevitable, and as an ex-fighter myself, and an ex-commander in the Army, I know that. We did what we could to fight a cruel terror organization that slaughtered twelve hundred of our people on the 7th of October, and is hiding behind its own people. So most I.D.F. actions were right. I do think that a lot of the coalition members of Netanyahu’s government were much more cruel and were not speaking wisely, as opposed to the Army leaders. I know the Army generals, and the huge majority of them are human people who do their best to fight a terror organization without fighting the people who are hiding among them. Israel did a fairly good job in trying to prevent civilians from getting hit, when the terror organization is doing exactly the opposite. And the same goes for Lebanon.And yet I’m not satisfied for two reasons. One is because I want Israel, Israel’s Army, to be the most moral army in the world, and I do believe it’s doing its best to be.You think the Israeli Army is doing its best right now to be the most moral army in the world?Yes.I think–Just a second, just a second. And I think Israel is treated unfairly on that issue, because I’ve seen other armies, and I’ve been part of the I.D.F., and I can tell you, Israel’s I.D.F. is an army that tries its best in very hard actions to do its best to be a moral army.But some of our ministers have been using terms that can’t be used, that are out of question, and we’re lucky enough that the Army didn’t obey them. Because if the Army would have obeyed them, then we would be an immoral country, but we’re not.I think that saying things like Israel is trying to be the most moral army in the world, and broadly supporting the policies carried out by that army in Gaza over the last three years, means that you and others in the opposition, if you come to power and want to rebuild Israel’s diplomacy, will find that your job is going to be difficult.I’m telling you what my opinion is.Thank you.This is my knowledge of what’s happening. I can tell you that the new chief of the I.D.F., when he came into office over a year ago, took actions against people in the I.D.F. who were committing bad actions. And they were kicked out of the Army. I think there should be more of that. It’s like fighting Jewish terror. It must be treated very, very firmly, because it’s our terror. It’s terror coming from the people of Israel, and that’s the reason we should treat it the most firmly and hard that we can. I believe in the morality of the Jewish people, and of the I.D.F., but when I have to criticize fascist statements coming from our leaders I do it. And I’m sure our new government will do a much better job. Our ministers will speak differently and act differently.But when you are fighting for your lives, and when you are fighting and defending your country, as we have been doing after October 7th, you have to understand that some things have to be done. ?