The pressure the IDF will exert will be “more and more powerful,” and will include “seizing territory” and “doing other things” in Gaza if Hamas does not return Israeli hostages, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in the Knesset plenum on Wednesday. The prime minister did not elaborate further. Netanyahu’s comments came during a debate known as the “40 Signatures Debate,” which is the Israeli version of the British “Prime Minister’s Questions”. The debate included a series of short speeches in the prime minister’s presence, after which the prime minister and opposition leader gave concluding speeches.
In his speech, Netanyahu repeated conspiracy theories about a “deep state.”"Democracy is not in danger; the bureaucracy is in danger, the deep state is in danger,” the prime minister said. “When I say 'bureaucracy,' I mean a small group of officials struggling to maintain the levers of power in the country.”
“Democracy is, first and foremost, the rule of the people. It is not the rule of officials, not the rule of former leaders, and not the rule of media outlets. In a democracy, the people are sovereign, and they demand that their vote in the ballot box be reflected in policy. This does not mean the government has unlimited power. We do not have a tyrannical rule, but it is impossible to expect the government to have negligible power,” Netanyahu said. (Read More)
