Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has blasted the country’s political leadership and the conduct of its military, telling CNN he is no longer able to defend Israel against accusations of war crimes.
Olmert, who led the country from 2006-2009, pointed to Israel’s 11-week blockade of humanitarian aid into Gaza and the soaring number of Palestinians killed.
“What is it if not a war crime?” he asked rhetorically in an interview with CNN. He said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right members of his government are “committing actions which can’t be interpreted any other way.”
Since the start of the war, Olmert has defended Israel abroad against accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. When women and children were killed, Olmert said he told officials and interviewers that Israel would not deliberately target civilians.
But 19 months into a war Olmert says should have ended a year ago, he believes he can no longer make that case. CNN spoke to Olmert following the publication of an op-ed by the former prime minister that was published in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper on Tuesday, in which he wrote: “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.”
CNN has asked the Prime Minister’s Office for comment on Olmert’s op-ed.
More than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, including at least 28,000 women and children. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in January that it had killed more than 20,000 Hamas fighters.
“I think that we have to make sure that no uninvolved people in Gaza are hurt because of the expansion of these military operations, which is entirely unjustified and doesn’t serve any important interests of the state of Israel at this point,” Olmert said.
Olmert, who spent 16 months in prison on corruption charges, leveled most of his criticism at Netanyahu, as well as far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
“I hope that this government will disappear as soon as possible,” he told CNN. “I believe that the majority of Israelis are sick and tired of these policies, of these statements, of what the terrible damage that was caused by this government to the moral integrity of the state of Israel and the people of Israel.”
Polls in Israel have repeatedly shown that most of the country supports a comprehensive ceasefire agreement that would see the release of the remaining 58 hostages held in Gaza and an end to the war. But Netanyahu has refused to commit to an end to the war, insisting that Israel’s expanding military campaign in Gaza will continue until the defeat of Hamas.
Like the hostage families, many of whom have given up on Netanyahu, Olmert placed his hope in US President Donald Trump to end the war. Trump, he said, is one of the only people who has the ability to compel Netanyahu to end the war.
“I really certainly think that he is the only person perhaps that can force the Israeli prime minister to come to terms with reality and with the moral reality of what is being accomplished by this government,” he told CNN.
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