‘We won’t take morality lessons’ from Erdogan

“It is hard to think about the long-term solution to the conflict,” the former prime minister of Israel, Yair Lapid, has told Kathimerini. At a time when the international community has turned its attention to the Gaza Strip, Kathimerini contacted the experienced politician and posed questions to him about the present and future of the conflict.

The current president of the centrist Yesh Atid party avoids drawing hasty conclusions about the reasons that allowed Hamas to take Israel by surprise. “It is clear that we were surprised and there was a serious failure here. There will be time after the war to investigate it fully and we will have to do that. At the moment, we have decided to put those questions aside and focus on supporting our security services, uniting the country, and winning this war that was forced upon us. We were attacked by a brutal terrorist organization and we have no choice now but to dismantle it entirely, that is our focus.” He underline: “I am not going to get into who is to blame or who is responsible at this stage. There will be time for that after the war.”

‘We have the strength within us, to win the war, but that is not our only goal. We can and we must build a better country and a better society’

With the leaders of the Arab world reacting in favor of the Palestinians and others keeping their distance, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israel an “occupier.” Former prime minister Lapid was invited to respond to how this operation will reshape his country’s relations with the Arab world. “I think many in the Arab world understand the threat of radical, violent extremism and terrorism. They have also been impacted by it over the years. They understand that Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are elements that will destroy this region, they are the antithesis of the vision of moderate Arab leaders. As for President Erdogan, we won’t take lessons in morality and human rights from him. We can only imagine what Turkey’s response would be to a massacre of its citizens like the one we suffered on October 7.”

In a recent article the Yesh Atid party president criticized the global far-left and the protests against Israel. We asked him what reasons led him to write this catapulting article. “It is incredible to me that the response of so many people after a massacre of Jews was to condemn Jews, to attack Jews, to incite against Jews,” Lapid explains.

“They saw Jews butchered in their beds, they saw the single worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, they saw babies being abducted and they decided to blame the Jews. When they chant from the ‘River to the Sea’ we know exactly what they mean, we saw on October 7 what that looks like. That is anti-Semitism, pure and simple. They do not care about the Palestinian people because if they did they would be condemning Hamas. This is a time for moral clarity, there is good and evil in this war.” He added, “Those that stand with Hamas, that glorify October 7 are standing on the side of evil.”

The interview concludes with the question of whether it is now realistic to talk about a political solution to the Palestinian question. How feasible is it to create a Palestinian state and what concessions would Israel be willing to offer the Palestinians? “It is hard to think about the long-term solution to the conflict,” he states. “It is important to clarify something – Hamas has nothing to do with a two-state solution or the creation of a Palestinian state. They want to destroy Israel; they want to murder Israelis. Right now, we have to focus on dismantling Hamas and then we will need to create something else in Gaza that will guarantee our security and keep terrorists out of Gaza.”

For Israel, though, Lapid is optimistic. “Israel will come back from this. It is true that it is hard. It is always hard, but hard never scared us before. We have never hurt like we are hurting now. We have the strength within us, to win the war, but that is not our only goal. We can and we must build a better country and a better society. That is what will come next. After we win the war, we will learn the lessons of this moment, we will rebuild and we will build an even better country.”