Olmert: ‘Gaza is Palestinian, and it has to be governed by the Palestinians’

Friends and relatives of Israelis detained by Hamas in the Gaza Strip hold candles during a ceremony in memory of the victims. Ehud Olmert points out that at this stage, the complete crushing of Hamas is not the priority. "We must stop the war and bring back the hostages. This is more important than anything else," he notes. [A.P./Ariel Schalit]

Two years ago, the former prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, in an interview with Kathimerini, underlined the excellent relations between the Israeli and Greek people. Today, with the war in the Gaza Strip entering its eighth month of military operations, Olmert stresses to Kathimerini that he felt offended by the anti-Semitic expressions of some Panathinaikos fans at the recent basketball game against Maccabi Tel Aviv.

A critic of Netanyahu's "far-right" coalition and the lack of an Israeli strategy for Gaza, he does not hesitate to assess as oxymoronic the reactions of the international community, which initially supported Israel's "righteous" reaction to the Hamas terrorist attack. In the same vein, the former prime minister describes as "ridiculous" and "childish" the comparison of Israel with Nazi Germany by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

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