Netanyahu defends war record after protest by bereaved parents

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defended his leadership in the build-up to the 2014 war in Gaza after protests by parents of soldiers killed.

Speaking at an event to mark two years since the conflict Tuesday, Netanyahu was heckled by two fathers of soldiers who accused him of seeking to monopolise power.

“I’m not willing as a bereaved father for you to undermine our democracy. I didn’t pay such a high price for that,” one said.

A number of parents of the 67 Israeli soldiers killed in the 2014 Gaza war with Hamas and other factions have lent their support to calls for an independent inquiry into the conflict, with Netanyahu’s government accused of being unprepared for Hamas’s tunnels at the time.

Such tunnels were used in a number of surprise attacks.

Netanyahu has refused to sanction such an inquiry, but his office released a statement late Tuesday saying the army had been fully prepared.

“Claims that Israel was unprepared to meet the tunnel threat are without foundation,” the statement said, adding that the cabinet discussed the threat nine times in as many months before the conflict.

The statement said it was “regrettable that there are those who have misled the public on substantive security issues”, without naming them.

Minister of Education Naftali Bennett, who heads the rightwing Jewish Home Party, has been a prominent critic of Netanyahu’s preparations for the conflict.

A comment piece in Israeli newspaper Yedioth Aharonot, which is hostile to Netanyahu, called on him to agree to the inquiry.

“Do you want the bereaved families to believe you? Accept their justified outcry and form a state commission of inquiry,” it said.