Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak recently laid out his plans to oust the current premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, despite Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Barak’s remarks were made during a six-minute interview, recorded on Dec. 3, with retired helicopter pilot Guy Poran, 67, the leader of a group of Israeli pilots that organized against Netanyahu in the months before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. The Jewish Press transcribed the Hebrew-language interview.
Highlights include Barak calling for demonstrators to “separate from the [judicial reform] protest movement” and stating that the movement to topple Netanyahu “must not wait” until the war ends.
Barak also described National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz and member Gadi Eizenkot as agents of the protest movement within the wartime unity government, saying that he believes that they will walk away from the government if there is a clash with the United States or the war with Hamas turns into a “war of attrition.”
“We must act to end Netanyahu’s role now and to expel [National Security Minister Itamer] Ben-Gvir and [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich from the government now, because only in their absence will the conditions be created that could make possible, in coordination with this axis of moderate states, the withdrawal from the Strip and hand it over to a responsible entity,” Barak concluded.
