Mofaz Hints at Netanyahu Plan to Attack Iran

Israel’s opposition leader Shaul Mofaz, who until last week served as deputy prime minister to Benjamin Netanyahu, gave a broad hint on Monday that the prime minister intends to launch a military strike against Iran, wrote David Horovitz, the editor of The Times of Israel, in his column today.

Mr. Mofaz, a former IDF chief of general staff and defense minister, led his Kadima party out of Israel’s governing coalition last week. The Times quotes Mofaz as wanting to have no part in “operational adventures” planned by Netanyahu.

“Kadima will not set out on operational adventures that will endanger the future of our young women and young men and the future of the citizens of Israel in the State of Israel,” Mofaz said. (The Times of Israel, 23 July)

Previously, it was thought that the Kadima Party had left the coalition because of disagreement with Likud over military service by ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Photo Credit: Shaul Mofaz, right, and Benjamin Netanyahu during a conference on 8 May 2012 / Miriam Alster/Flash90/The Times of Israel

Kadima Pulls Out of Israeli Government

Israel plunged toward a political crisis today after the largest party in the government quit the governing coalition. Kadima Party, the more moderate member of the coalition, voted to pull out of the government in a feud over granting draft exemptions to ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students. Kadima is led by Shaul Mofaz, a former IDF chief of general staff (he was born in Tehran in 1948), and will now join the opposition. The move might force Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to call for early elections. In the meantime, Israel will be led by a coalition with a narrow parliamentary majority dominated by religious and nationalist hard-liners.