Israeli officials condemned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to call for raids on Lebanon after US President Donald Trump urged him to stop them.
This comes after a heated phone conversation that took place between Trump and Netanyahu regarding the Israeli strikes in Lebanon, according to what Axios reported. According to a US official quoted by Axios, Trump expressed his extreme frustration at what he considered a disproportionate military response to Hezbollah’s strikes on Israel.
Read also | “You are crazy”: Trump attacks Netanyahu in a phone call regarding the escalation in Lebanon
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said he asked Netanyahu not to engage in a major raid on Beirut, Lebanon, and claimed he “turned his troops around. Thanks, Bibi!”
The US President said that he also held a conversation with representatives of Hezbollah’s leadership, and they agreed to cease fire on Israel and its soldiers.
However, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said in a post on X that the country’s position has not changed, and that the IDF will continue to operate as planned in southern Lebanon.
The Times of Israel reported that after Trump’s announcement, an Israeli source said that Israel had agreed to postpone the planned strikes on Beirut, hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that they had instructed the army to strike Hezbollah targets in the capital.
Many Israeli leaders took to social media to express their condemnation of Netanyahu’s decision.
In his speech to Netanyahu, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir urged him to say “no” to Trump and continue striking Hezbollah.
“I said that a strong Prime Minister says to the President of the United States – ‘yes’ when possible, and ‘no’ – when it is necessary. This is the time to tell our friend, President Trump – ‘no’. Now is the time to do what is needed and necessary to strike Hezbollah, unleash the hands of our fighters, and restore security in the north,” he wrote on X.
According to the Jerusalem Post, former Israeli army chief of staff Weishar! Party leader Gadi Eisenkot described Trump’s directives as an “absolutely insulting and unreasonable demand” and added that Netanyahu “is the man who preached morality to everyone about the basic need to be prime minister and knows how to say ‘no’ to the president of the United States.”
The Israeli outlet also noted that opposition leader Yair Lapid criticized Netanyahu for acting as if Israel were a protectorate state of the United States.
Lapid had called for a “strong response” to the rocket launches from Lebanon on Saturday, saying that “responsibility for the security of Israeli citizens lies solely with the Israeli government.”
Knesset member Oded Forer urged Netanyahu to “carry out his role and work to protect the residents of the north.”
This comes after a heated phone conversation that took place between Trump and Netanyahu regarding the Israeli strikes in Lebanon, according to what Axios reported. According to a US official quoted by Axios, Trump expressed his extreme frustration at what he considered a disproportionate military response to Hezbollah’s strikes on Israel.
Over the weekend, Israeli forces carried out the deepest ground incursion into Lebanese territory in 26 years.
Further exacerbating the crisis on Monday, Netanyahu launched new strikes against the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, signaling a significant escalation in the regional conflict.
