Gantz: Current leadership is divisive, I won’t join Netanyahu if indicted

Israel deserves new leadership that is not condescending, is not divisive and does not view itself as royalty, Benny Gantz the former IDF chief of staff, announced on Tuesday night as he broke a months-long silence and officially launched the campaign of his new political party Israel Resilience.

Gantz thanked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the past decade of his service as prime minister and vowed to replace him. He praised Netanyahu for trying to achieve peace in the Wye River Accords but said “no leader is a king” and repeatedly criticized him for his alleged corruption.

“My government that I will form will have zero tolerance for corruption,” Gantz said.

Gantz spoke hours after finalizing an alliance with another former chief of staff, Moshe Ya’alon and his party. The two will run in a joint list. The alliance talks were negotiated by Gantz’s aides Hod Betzer and Chili Tropper and on Ya’alon’s side – former cabinet secretary Zvi Hauser and former Netanyahu spokesman Yoaz Hendel.

“I love Israel, am proud of it,” Gantz said. “Israel is truly, for me, before everything. Citizens of Israel, those here and those at home, I have an obligation to you alone.”

Leadership, he said, does not divide but is supposed to bring people together. “No Israeli leader is a king,” he said, adding that he us running to become the next prime minister of the State of Israel.

“Our country needs leadership that will behave differently and lead differently, that will not weaken us from within,” Gantz said. “The struggle between Left and Right is tearing us apart. the struggle between Jews and non-Jews is crushing us.”

Netanyahu, he said, should not be allowed to remain in office after being indicted. “The idea that a prime minister can stay in office who has been indicted is ridiculous in my eyes,” he said. “We will correct the relationships between the three branches of government.”

Gantz said that his party would “connect between Israelis.”

“We place Israel and Israelis before everything,” he said. “There will not be a culture of incitement or attacks against the the media. It will not be half a nation of Left and half a nation Right.”

He said he would not give a hand to a government led by a prime minister with indictments hanging over him. He said a government led by him would end what he called “incitement against the legal establishment and the press.”

Watch the speech live below:

Gantz recalled his 38 years in uniform as a soldier, fighter and officer.

“I led soldiers behind enemy lines and I can say that security is done through actions and not words,” he said.