Netanyahu: ‘I hold myself and everyone responsible for 7 October failure’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed that he holds himself responsible for the 7 October failure, adding: “I think we have to examine how it happened. What was the intelligence failure?”

In an interview with Dr Phil on the Merit+ channel, Netanyahu explained: “We can delve into it. But I think the important thing right now is to make sure that we don’t have another failure because the greatest failure would be… if we don’t complete [the counterattack], if we allow these murderers to be there and to get control of Gaza again… I’m focused right now on achieving this victory.”

Netanyahu admitted: “There were failures, obviously. The government’s first responsibility is to protect the people. That’s the ultimate enveloping responsibility. People weren’t protected. We have to admit that.”

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“I hold myself and everyone on this. I think we have to examine how it happened. What was the intelligence failure? What was the military failure? We can delve into it, but the important thing right now is to make sure that we don’t have another failure,” he continued.

On tensions with US President Joe Biden, Netanyahu responded: “I’ve known Joe Biden for many years — 40 years and more. We often had our agreements, but we’ve had our disagreements. We’ve been able to overcome them. I hope we can overcome them now.”

Netanyahu stressed: “We will do what we have to do to protect our country, and that means to protect our future. And that means we will defeat Hamas, including in Rafah. We have no other choice.”

Regarding the day after the war, Netanyahu noted that there are still four Hamas battalions and Israel needs to eliminate them: “We’ll have to assure continuous demilitarisation because even if you destroy the terrorist army, you can have individual terrorists left. We have to root them out constantly. We’ll probably have to have some kind of civilian government, civilian administration by Gazans who are not committed to our destruction, possibly with the aid of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and other countries that I think want to see stability and peace. But we are going to have to have Israel continually root out terrorists because I do not see anyone coming in to do that right now.”

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