Since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's statement to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the number killed in the 7/10 massacre is similar to the number killed since the Oslo Accords, tempers have been raging within the Likud as well.
While Knesset members in the party support Netanyahu's statement – especially when the question of the day after the war is on the agenda, and the desire of the Americans and Israeli political elements to strengthen the PA with the dismantling of Hamas – others say in closed conversations that even a campaign waged during a war must have its limits.
"We have to be careful not to divide at this time," said a senior Likud source. "Despite the general perception in the Likud that Oslo was indeed a disaster, there are things that it is better not to say now that half a million fighters in Gaza and thousands of others are mourning, bereaved and troubled by the fate of their loved ones in Hamas captivity."
Reuters
At the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Netanyahu said that "Oslo is the mother of all sin," the beginning of all the conceptions and withdrawals that ultimately led to the current situation. Merav Michaeli, chairman of the Labor Party, asked him why, then, he did not act to cancel the Oslo Accords during his long rule.
To this, Netanyahu replied: "The problem was not the agreement itself but its implementation." He elaborated that the idea of allowing Arabs to conduct their civilian lives is a good idea in itself, but getting Arafat to do so, and in effect establishing an authority hostile to Israel, is the problem.
"The campaign also needs limits"
According to a Likud source who was present in the committee's conference room, "Netanyahu is in a full-fledged campaign. When political threats from the outside are increasing, and Netanyahu knows that over time the attacks and calls for his ouster will intensify, he is working first of all to restore his base. To bring in the right-wing audience that supported him and differentiate him from the rest. In order to do that, he is now attacking Oslo and denying entry into Gaza, accusing others of doing so without hesitation if he is removed from the leadership."
However, he said, "even these campaigns or attempts at differentiation and protection must have limits. It is impossible in wartime to return to divisive and inciting discourse against a large public, some now in Gaza in uniform, some licking the wounds from the massacre. Netanyahu would do well to stop making these statements and not repeat them."
MK Danny Danon also says that if Netanyahu intended to compare the victims of the Simchat Torah massacre to those murdered in Oslo in recent decades, then he was "wrong, and it would be better if he did not compare." However, as someone who sat in the room when Netanyahu made his remarks, he is not sure that Netanyahu intended to compare. "He talked about the Oslo victims as an agreement that brought all the troubles to the State of Israel, but I'm not sure he compared the number of murdered then and now. I didn't realize that, at least when I heard it."
Another Likud source, who is closer to Netanyahu, said that Netanyahu's need to attack Oslo and the PA stems not from political considerations but from deflecting international pressure. "The United States has been talking about the two-state plan since the war broke out. President Biden mentions this in his speeches nonstop. Netanyahu wants to show him and the world how much he opposes PA control the day after the collapse of Hamas, and to reject the two-state plan in Judea and Samaria as well, which is why he talks about Oslo and the murdered. To say that it didn't work and that there's no point in trying it again, at the expense of the lives of Israeli citizens."
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