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Yosi Balin is Israel's former justice minister. He joins us now live uh from Tel Aviv. Good to have you with us, sir. What do you make of Benjamin Netanyahu's security doctrine? Attack first in order to defend. Well, it's not a very innovative idea. I think that it is very superficial. I don't think that anybody is going to be impressed by this uh paper. erh which was not done uh through consultations with the cabinet, with the parliament, with the very high ranking people in the security establishment. He got up in the morning and suggested some uh points which are part of them are obvious, part of them are really not serious. H it is not going to be even mentioned I believe in the coming
days in our debates. Donald Trump endorsed Netanyahu on Sunday night calling him a warrior saying that he needs needed him in office in order to take on Iran. Do you do you agree with Trump's characterization of Netanyahu and his role in Iran? Had I been the Israeli prime minister, I wouldn't have asked the American president to endorse me. Another key issue in this campaign failures on October the 7th is a reckoning as to who's responsible uh for the for those likely in this election. How difficult is it to hold people at the top accountable? Well, you are right that this is a major issue in the debates, but in my view there is only one serious issue besides the mistakes which were done and besides the responsibility of
Netanyahu to the wrongdoings and what we found out in the last three years. Actually, it is one thing and the one thing is the following one. Netanyahu as an Israeli prime minister decided to support Hamas's activities in Gaza and to assure that Hamas exists while that Palestinian authority is weakened. That's the point. That's the main point. And why is it so? Not because Netanyahu is in love with the Hamas platform, but because Hamas doesn't demand Israeli withdrawal or a two-state solution. He just wants us to disappear. While the Palestinian Authority and the PLO and Mahmud Abbas, the president of
the Palestinian Authority, want to have a two-state solution, Israel and the Palestinian state living side by side. And this is exactly what Netanyahu doesn't want. As a result of it, I think that he made a huge mistake. for which I hope he will is going to pay in the next elections and this is to decide to support an organization like Hamas rather than the pragmatic Palestinians who want to have peace with Israel and this will not continue in the next term. So before we continue our discussion I want to give people a sense of how some Israelis are feeling about all of this. Let's take a listen to two voters on this issue of security.
The main issue in Israel is security. After October the 7th, I'm voting based solely on security. Not for whoever will help me buy an apartment in 10 years, but for whoever can guarantee that I'll still be alive then. We can't return once more to the understanding that preceded October the 7th and then be hit by another October the 7th. That's why we must fight and win decisively so we don't go back to the previous situation. How do you think that those sentiments are going to play out at the bottom? Well, we know that security defense is very important. But what is it actually? Is it only to have some more tanks or some more airplane? No, it is the idea of
security in education in the economy in our international relations and we have been weakened in the last four years on all these areas. So when you are asking somebody what is important for you and he or she answer security they are actually referring to all the areas of life and this is why I think that it will be very difficult for Netanyao to win the elections when people obviously see that there were no developments but uh the other way around. Good to talk to you so many thanks indeed for being with us. Yosi Bailey there in Tel Aviv.
