Against the background of fighting in the south Opposition Leader Yair Lapid gave a speech today (Monday) during the opening of the Knesset winter session, saying: “There is only one way in which this can end: we will bring the captives home, and there will be no more Hamas in Gaza.”
Lapid began his speech: “In the last few days, we’ve all said the same thing – we’ll continue onto victory. Everyone’s together until the victory. There’s just one question we need to ask ourselves: How does this victory look? What does it mean? How will our lives look after we win?”
“The Israeli system collapsed because it was cut off from its DNA”
Lapid addressed the war and the possibility of collapsing Hamas rule in Gaza: “Victory has its clearer part, which we all understand and we all share: we will drive out Hamas. Entirely. The error of many years will not repeat itself – we cannot live alongside a murderous terror organization.”
According to him: “There is only one way this can end: we will bring the captives home, and there will be no Hamas in Gaza. It will take time, it will require the use of much force. If the world doesn’t like it – so it won’t like it. It is not the children of the world who were murdered, it was our children who were murdered. Yaeli’s best friend was murdered. We need to make sure this threat never hovers over her head. We will not stop until we make sure of it.”
The Opposition Leader noted that victory ultimately lies in the DNA of Israeli society. “But this is not the victory, it is only the path to it. The real victory is not what will happen to the enemy, but what will happen to us,” he said. “The real victory lies in the question of how we get out of this. For ten days, Israelis have told each other, ‘After what happened, we won’t be the same country.’ I agree, I’m only reminding everyone – what country we will be depends on us.”
“The Israeli system collapsed because it became cut off from its moral DNA. Israel always told the world: we are the only democracy in the Middle East, and we are the strongest country in the Middle East. We only forget that these two things are not separate; they are cause and effect.”
He added: “We are stronger because we are a Jewish and democratic country. We are more technological and creative than our enemy, because these are forces which grow only in a strong and open society. We are an economic and military success story because we are a state where there is freedom and equality and the rule of law. The source of our power is that we do not just understand power. We understand more than that.”
“The events of October 7 are a reminder that our greatest strength is not the fence, but the people living behind it. Our strength derives from the ideas we believe in: the values of the Declaration of Independence, the vision of the Prophets of Israel.”
“To rebuild what was destroyed, we need to operate in a pincer movement, doing two things: the first thing is dealing with the danger and defeating it, and the second thing is fixing the systems which protected our lives and collapsed, restoring faith in ourselves, our internal strength, our state.”