Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned his government ministers on Sunday to choose their words carefully regarding the Israeli war with Hamas.
He added: "Every word has a meaning when it comes to diplomacy. If you don't know, don't speak. We must be very precise."
As an example of the statements Netanyahu meant, Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter told Channel 12 that the war was “the Nakba of Gaza.”
Israeli media considered that an Israeli minister's use of this term "fuels allegations that Israel is trying to expel the Palestinian civilian population from Gaza."
The statement of the extremist Israeli Heritage Minister, Amichai Eliyahu, sparked a wave of local criticism and a storm of international condemnation, when he said that one of the proposed solutions for dealing with the poor and besieged Gaza Strip was to hit it with a nuclear bomb as the war on it entered its second month.
But the Israeli minister forgot that his speech undermines a decades-old Israeli policy called “nuclear ambiguity,” and proves beyond a doubt that Tel Aviv possesses a nuclear weapon.
Eliyahu said in a radio interview on Sunday that the option of bombing the Gaza Strip with nuclear weapons was “one way” to deal with it.
The minister did not care about the fate of the Israeli prisoners in Gaza if this weapon was used, saying that there is “a price for every war.”
Soon, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that the participation of Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu in Cabinet meetings was suspended “until further notice.”
Several ministers stated that Israel could or should consider rebuilding settlements in the Strip, again contradicting the official Israeli position that it does not intend to reoccupy Gaza in the long term.
Israel has faced increasing international pressure over its military campaign as the death toll in Gaza rises, and commentators predict that calls for a ceasefire will grow as the weeks pass and the civilian costs rise.
Comments