Netanyahu's leadership draws sharp criticism from former chief of staff

Former Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz has sharply criticised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and said he was leading Israel "from bad to worse."

Halutz unleashed his criticism during an interview with Israeli Channel 13 late Tuesday as Tel Aviv continues a devastating onslaught against besieged Palestinians in Gaza.

"He (Netanyahu) is responsible, and I don't know a country in the world where a prime minister would not climb the tallest tower and jump off of it after something like this," said Halutz, referring to the surprise blitz by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas on Israel in early October.

Hamas launched the raid on Israeli military bases and settlements along the Gaza fence "in response to the occupation's daily attacks on the Palestinian people and their sanctities, especially Al Aqsa Mosque," according to the Palestinian group.

Halutz said Netanyahu "refuses to acknowledge this because in his calendar, there is no October 7, he has the sixth and the eighth, and on the eighth, the war began and he was fighting. But this man does not fight, he is leading us from bad to worse."

Halutz, along with other Israeli figures, previously urged Netanyahu to resign as the prime minister is considering his personal political interests and is trying to stay in power after the fighting ends.

Netanyahu, the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history, refuses to take responsibility for the October 7 intelligence failure and opposes early elections.

There is increasing speculation in Israel that the results of investigations into the failure to confront the Hamas blitz and the course of the war against Gaza will lead to the dismissal of political, military, and intelligence leaders, led by Netanyahu.

Genocide in Gaza

Under Netanyahu's leadership, Israel has waged a deadly military invasion on Palestinian territories since the Hamas blitz, killing more than 32,000 Palestinians, 70 percent of them women and children, and wounding 75,000 others amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85 percent of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60 percent of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.​​​​​​​

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

On Monday, a leading UN rights expert said there were "reasonable grounds" to determine that Israel has committed several acts of "genocide" in its war in Gaza, also evoking "ethnic cleansing".

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, said there were clear indications that Israel had violated three of the five acts listed under the UN Genocide Convention.

Also on Monday, the UN Security Council for the first time demanded an "immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire."