Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett praised US President Donald Trump for his efforts to secure the release of the Israeli hostages, but came down strongly on the Israeli government for the deal, which, in his words, includes apologizing to Qatar and releasing a large number of terrorists.
“I wish to thank President Donald Trump, who works with all his might to secure the release of our hostages. We will never forget that during the October 7th Massacre, over 1,200 Israelis were murdered, burned, and raped, and 251 were abducted from their beds. This was a terrible failure that demands a state commission of inquiry. An unerasable tragedy,” Bennett wrote on X.
He added, “Over the past two years, many hundreds of our sons fell in Gaza; we lost the best of the best. Dozens of hostages were murdered in Hamas captivity, and now, the massacre and war are supposed to end after the Israeli government apologized (!) to the funders of the massacre in Qatar and frees many hundreds of Sinwar-like terrorist murderers. This is a difficult move, but a necessary one after the Israeli government didn’t manage to defeat Hamas and return our captive brothers, who are rotting away in captivity, and the price we are and will continue to pay will be too high to handle.”
“The difficult chapter that our country is in must close with the return of our sons and daughters, and the transition into a new and different chapter of the unification and rehabilitation of the State of Israel,” Bennett concluded.