The Knesset opposition slammed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following a pair of rare back-to-back press conferences on Sunday evening, accusing him of lying to the nation and placing his own political interests above those of the public.
“It was a horror show by a failed prime minister who replaced reality with a presentation,” declared Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, arguing that the outcome of Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza would be that “the hostages will die, soldiers will die, the economy will fall apart and our international standing will collapse.”
“Netanyahu has no majority in the Knesset, and he has no majority among the people,” Lapid stated. “He heads an illegitimate minority government, and he is unable to even manage it. This government cannot [be allowed to] drag us into the occupation of Gaza.”
Days after his cabinet approved a new major offensive in Gaza City to root out Hamas forces there, the premier denied that Israel intends to occupy Gaza, saying his intention was to swiftly end the war rather than prolong it. He described how a future “civilian administration” would be established in the Strip to govern Palestinians in a manner that does not threaten Israel, while avoiding saying who would take part in it.
As security forces and hostages’ families decried the Gaza City plan as potentially endangering the hostages’ lives, Netanyahu argued that an Israeli takeover of Gaza would in fact enable the return of the living hostages.
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Netanyahu also claimed that he was working to recruit the ultra-Orthodox community into the IDF, rejecting claims that he is deliberately delaying this process to gain political support from the Haredi parties.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a press conference at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerursalem, on August 10, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/ Flash90)
He appeared to blame the delay in passing a law regulating ultra-Orthodox enlistment on former Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein, whom he said had tried “every way to prolong committee meetings again and again so that there would be no legislation.”
“Now we have moved to a process where there will be legislation, there will be a law, and there will be enlistment,” he asserted.
Last month, the Haredi United Torah Judaism party quit the coalition, after being presented with a copy of a proposed enlistment bill prepared by Edelstein which, it argued, had violated the terms of a supposed compromise reached in June. They were quickly followed by Shas, which, while quitting the government, has remained part of the coalition. Netanyahu’s Likud then ousted Edelstein, replacing him with MK Boaz Bismuth, who is expected to seek an arrangement that will satisfy Haredi parties.
“The one who just fired the chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee to pass an evasion law cannot tell our fighters that they must go and be killed in Gaza,” argued Lapid in his statement, calling Netanyahu’s defense policies “a danger to the State of Israel and its security.”
“Instead, a deal needs to be made, all the hostages returned, the war ended, and Egypt brought in to run Gaza over the coming years,” he argued.
Yisrael Beytenu chair Avigdor Liberman leads a faction meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, on May 5, 2025 (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Other opposition party heads condemned Netanyahu’s remarks as well.
“After 22 months of war, after promising that ‘we are one step away from total victory,’ after 674 days of our hostages languishing in captivity, Netanyahu tonight declared: ‘I have instructed the IDF to defeat Hamas.’ Ridiculous. As if until today, IDF soldiers were touring in Gaza,” tweeted The Democrats party chairman Yair Golan.
“What we saw tonight is not ‘one step from victory,’ but the most severe security failure in Israel’s history,” he wrote.
Netanyahu “continues to lie with brazen audacity” and is sacrificing the hostages “on the altar of preserving the coalition just as he sacrifices the regular service and reserve soldiers” in order to placate the Haredi parties, declared Yisrael Beytenu party chairman Avigdor Liberman.
“Too many words, too few actions — too much time,” added Blue and White-National Unity chairman Benny Gantz.
‘Like a knife in the heart’
Netanyahu’s comments also sparked a spat between former prime minister Naftali Bennett and Shas party leader Aryeh Deri, after Netanyahu was asked about Deri’s recent remark urging yeshiva students not to even think about abandoning their studies to enlist in the army and contribute militarily to the current war in Gaza.
“I didn’t hear it, but he told me he denied these words. I don’t know. I didn’t see it and they told me he didn’t say it,” Netanyahu stated, prompting Bennett to tweet a video of Deri’s comments along with the assertion that somebody who “calls for draft refusal cannot send soldiers to battle.”
Deri’s words “are like a knife in the heart,” Bennett stated.
Former prime minister Naftali Bennett speaks during a tech conference in Ness Ziona, May 5, 2025. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
In remarks made late last month at the Shaar HaMelech yeshiva in Jerusalem and aired by the i24News network last week, Deri could be heard discouraging the students from enlisting, stating: “God forbid it should occur to anyone here in a moment of weakness that maybe at a time like this when the people of Israel are in a state of war… that anybody should, God forbid, perhaps think… maybe we really need to do something different, maybe we need to contribute. God forbid.”
Rather than respond to the substance of Bennett’s accusation, Shas attacked the former premier — who rose to power in 2021 by joining the anti-Netanyahu bloc despite declaring days earlier, shortly before Knesset elections, that he would only join a Netanyahu-led government — as a “swindler” who “stuck a knife in the heart” of the voters when he took “the votes of the right and transferred them to the left.”
Nava Freiberg contributed to this report.
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