Teksten nedenfor er en transkripsjon av et intervju gjort av Tim Franks i BBC-programmet Newshour fredag 8. august 2025. Transkripsjonen er Google-oversatt til norsk .
- Michael Kleiner is a senior member of the governing Likud party. If the prime minister’s argument is that the declared war aims have not been met, why should simply doing more of the same thing now work?
If you compare Hamas strength in comparison to Hisbollah in Lebanon to the Iranian army, so it should have been much easier and a much weaker opponent. And yet you know we finished the war in Lebanon very quickly and actually Hisbollah is now not more a factor, The same you know the result of what happened in Iran you know it’s been ended. Now Hamas were the problem because of the hostages. And we have a lot of limitations because all our operations were under the pressure try to put the hostages out of danger and also actually take the population out of harm’s way. And the demand or the need – or the wish – is to end it in order to enter suffering of the population and to try to get back the hostages.
- But you know when you’ve got the chief of staff the Israeli defense forces who’s a pretty tough cookie saying this would be ruinous, I mean that was openly briefed – that he just thought this simply could not work. It would be a military disaster – a quagmire – for the Israeli army to be sucked into this. Are you really confident that it could work?
First of all: you are never confident, but continuous situation as is, is worse than some sort of a compromise. And as you said correctly we want to do it in a moral way. We do it all the time you do it all the time, you know. we’re putting millions of food packages into Gaza the last few days, we’re trying to evacuate the population. The the moment it will end, it will ease the suffering of the population, it will ease the hunger created by Hamas and blamed upon Israel. And it will ease, also, the suffering of the hostages.
- You will also know that not just internationally but within Israel there are very very many voices who say: «Yes of course Hamas should bear responsibility for the fact that this war began at all.» But, you know, you can talk about safe zones, you can use the language of safe zones, you can use the language of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, but the truth is: people – those who are still alive – are being told to move into zones that are not safe zones, whatever you call them. And you can talk about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and millions of meals – people are starving, and Israel controls the amount of food that is going into Gaza. Israel is responsible and you now saying: «Well, what we’ve been doing, maybe it hasn’t worked, but we’re going to do it on an even greater scale.» Well, perhaps you will actually just cause even greater misery and not achieve your goals.
The amount is not sufficient. The amount of food which we’re putting in the last few weeks is enormous, but the problem is that Hamas is taking control of it. Hamas is not giving it to the not giving it to the population, they sell it for prices that 80% of the population cannot afford because they want the hunger.
- That picture that you’re painting is not the one that we are getting from the ground in Gaza. I mean – obviously we’re not allowed i to reeport directly …
But the picture is false! The picture is fabricated by Hamas backed by Qatari money, by propaganda, by fake news and by media that not always is favourable to Israel.
- Hamas may well be thinking – as far as its leadership still exists in Gaza – that actually Israel, launching this expanded offensive, plays entirely into its hands because what it is doing is exhausting Israel from within and it is discrediting Israel from outside. Are you not concerned about that?
I am very much concerned of this, and what you said, is exactly why we try to deal with this operation. The word «operation», you know, is done also in medicine. Operation is sometimes dangerous and has risks, but if it succeeds, it cures the disease. And basically then it will free if Hamas is surrendering and if they’re ready to take the safe path and go out and de-militarize Gaza and forces will go in in south to rebuild Gaza the biggest winner of this will be the Palestinian population.
- Michael, if we were to take that medical analogy and just turn it round and just turn it round that you would say that if the treatment that has been dispensed for the last 22 months has exhausted and divided Israel internally and discredited Israel internationally, so damaged Israel – I mean quite apart from what it has done to the people in Gaza – that doctors would say: «We shouldn’t increase this increase this treatment. We should stop it, we should change it.
Change it by a way that has a prospect of curing the disease. When you a bombed Dresden in ’45 this brought the surrender of Germany, and the surrender of Germany was the one exit stop to suffering of both the armys of Britain and the United States and Russia, and on the other hand of the German population.