Ya'alon to start new political party, run for PM position
Former defense minister and IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon states that he plans on founding his own political party and running for the prime ministership; 'I've decided that I care about our children and grandchildren,' says Ya'alon. 'I made the decision to found a party, a political force, to run for national leadership.'
Speaking at a cultural event at Habima Theater in Tel Aviv on Saturday, former defense minister and IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon stated that he plans on erecting a new political party and running for the position of prime minister during the next elections. "When I reached that point where I decided to resign, I decided that I care about the country, our children and our grandchildren. So I made the decision to found a party, a political force, to run for national leadership," stated Ya'alon.
During the Q&A portion of the event, Ya'alon also responded to the recently released comptroller's report, which criticized the Security Cabinet's decision making during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Ya'alon was the minister of defense and part of the cabinet during this time.
Ya'alon gave a double-sided response to the report, defending the Security Cabinet's actions while coming out against unnamed individuals in the cabinet. "There were people in the cabinet looking to hurt the prime minister and defense minister," claimed Ya'alon, before adding, "We reached our aim without Hamas achieving anything. If we would have gone for slogans, we would have had many more casualties, and they would have fired more rockets."
"This is why we strove for a ceasefire under our conditions without any achievement for the Hamas.
After coming out against members of the Security Cabinet who "said one thing in the confines of closed rooms and something else once outside, he lamented that "Unfortunately, the (comptroller's—ed) report has become the blow horn for those who acted this way, and not those who acted with discretion and responsibility, preventing something much more catastrophic. And look at the results: two and a half years of unprecedented quiet. It's a good thing that our enemies appreciate the IDF much more than we do.
"When I am required to kill, I understand the weight of that responsibility," said Ya'alon. "Any attempts, particularly on Facebook, to rack up likes for taking out the Hamas or giving (senior Hamas leader—ed) Ismail Haniyeh a 48-hour ultimatum—that's not where I'm at."
The report also claimed that Ya'alon knew about the threat from Hamas tunnels into Israel, but did not present the severity of the threat to the cabinet, in addition to the IDF's lacking of intelligence relating to the tunnels. "The issue of tunnels has concerned the IDF since back when I was still in uniform," said Ya'alon. "The Americans deal with it along the border with Mexico, and they don't have a solution for it.
"Our operational readiness surrounding Gaza assumed that we could have terrorists coming out of the ground, and when that happened we were there. We were given 400 solution options, and they were all looked into. There are things for which you cannot find an absolute solution.
"After an operation like Protective Edge, I need to be able to look at myself in the mirror, look into the eyes of the soldiers under my command, into the eyes of bereaved family members and into those who we managed to spare the fate of bereavement," said Ya'alon. "I'm at peace with myself."
Finally, Ya'alon also slipped in a bit of "shade" when alluding to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's embroiling in suspicions of bribery or gift receiving, depending of who one chooses to believe. "I learned how to drink wine and put on a suit for my country. But cigars? That I never had to do for my country," said Ya'alon.
