TEL AVIV: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kicked off his Likud party\u2019s election campaign on Thursday with a speech focussed on security concerns.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu has come under fire for his government\u2019s failure to prevent the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the deadliest in the country\u2019s history, but on Thursday he insisted that he and his party \u201care the only ones who can guarantee Israel\u2019s security.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went on to list Israeli military operations that have taken place in Iran, Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip since 2023. \u201cThe mission must be completed, we must bring down the Iranian regime and totally destroy Hezbollah and Hamas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He also accused his rivals of wanting to make \u201cterritorial concessions,\u201d and pointed to Israeli troops in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza as evidence that \u201cwe take land instead of giving it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The premier repeated his refrain that he \u201chas changed the face of the Middle East,\u201d vowing to change it yet again, without offering specifics.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu heads the most right-wing government in Israeli history. He has led his country into a series of wars while ramping up construction of settlements \u2014 deemed illegal under international law \u2014 in the occupied West Bank, where violence has surged since the Gaza war began.<\/p>\n
He is the first head of government to face a criminal trial, with several corruption charges levelled against him, which he denies.<\/p>\n
Opinion polls show the October 27 elections are likely to be close. The bloc led by Netanyahu and his far-right and ultra-Orthodox allies are squaring off against that of his main opponent, centrist Gadi Eisenkot, who is backed by parties from both the right and the left.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEL AVIV: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kicked off his Likud party\u2019s election campaign on Thursday with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[152807,280093,85,46,40517,2897,43,140],"class_list":["post-619419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-election-campaign","tag-hamas-israeli-war-2023","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-israeli-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-netanyahu","tag-news","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}