Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/occupied Palestine) 02.07.2026
Minister Bezalel Smotrich claims that the Israeli abductees returned thanks to him. When Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon, who served as head of the Prisoners and Missing Persons Command, dared to set the record at the Herzliya conference yesterday, he immediately responded with an inflammatory and wild statement from the Likud faction. It is clear that the Likud identifies a weak point in its version of events and immediately attacks back with all its might, every time someone dares to present the truth. This, as anyone who was involved in the negotiations or covered them knows, it is quite simple: Netanyahu, under pressure from Smotrich and his partner Itamar Ben-Gvir, repeatedly delayed possible progress in the talks because he feared for the fate of his government. Between the collapse of the previous talks and the third, final deal, about 40 of the abductees lost their lives and thousands of Gazans.
The distortions, in the run-up to the elections, are not limited to the case of the hostages. The day before, in a fan hostel on television, Netanyahu stumbled in his tongue when referring to the war in Iran. Netanyahu claimed that he had gone to war twice in order to “save us from the destruction of atomic bombs that they already had, and you will know who was here today.” Then, in contradiction to the previous presentation, he pledged: “As long as I am prime minister, Iran will not have nuclear weapons.”
Netanyahu’s claim is another blatant lie. There is no security official in Israel or the United States who claims that the Iranians had nuclear bombs ready, neither in the first campaign against them in June last year nor in the second campaign, which was recently halted by a ceasefire and began in February of this year. What did happen is that the Iranians accumulated, also following Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear agreement in May 2018 under pressure from Netanyahu, 440 kilograms of uranium enriched at a high level of 60%. Such a quantity, if it had been raised to a military enrichment level of 90%, it would have been enough to produce 11 bombs, but here too another step is required to adapt the bomb to a combat warhead of a ballistic missile. What they did not do.
Less than four months before the elections, the situation of the coalition factions, all of which supported the massacre of the Palestinian people, is not bright. They will not be able to form a government without the Arab parties, and most of them have pledged not to join Arab parties.
And the Arab parties do not commit themselves not to join a Zionist government or support it from the outside, only Balad probably will not join or support a Zionist government if it will pass and it is the only party we may give critical support to.
But since this time a victory — or at least a paralyzing draw that will ensure the term of a transitional government for a few more months — this time is more critical than ever, Netanyahu is expected to use all means: identity politics, aggressive attacks on his opponents, taking control of the agenda by escalating war crises, and accusing his rivals of a planned violation of the integrity of the elections.