The column argues that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should immediately invite all opposition leaders to a substantive meeting on how to respond to what it calls the dangerous and foolish demands of U.S. President Donald Trump over Lebanon. It says opposition leaders, too, should put aside ego and cooperate with Netanyahu in defense of Israel’s national interest, especially while elections are approaching and the country faces one of its most difficult diplomatic situations ever.
The writer stresses the strategic importance of Israel’s military presence in southern Lebanon, citing large tunnels and weapons stockpiles found at Beaufort and the al-Taher ridge. The ridge, described as a fortified compound with underground infrastructure, bunkers and buried launchers, is said to serve as Hezbollah’s fire-control center in the Nabatieh area. The article says the area has been repeatedly bombed since Operation Northern Shield and includes observation over Metula, Nabatieh, Jabal Rihan and Sajd.
To support the call for national unity, the column recalls the aftermath of the Knesset election on 28 October 1969, when Golda Meir tried to re-create the national unity government formed before the Six-Day War. It says Menachem Begin and Gahal resisted joining, while the United States, under President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State William Rogers, pursued its own Middle East diplomacy over Israel’s head during the War of Attrition.
The article quotes Dan Margalit’s 1971 book on the subject and recounts how Rogers publicly signaled a U.S.-Soviet framework that implied no long-term Israeli presence in the West Bank or most of Sinai, with vague talk about shared arrangements in Jerusalem. It says the resulting crisis pushed Gahal into joining the government after Rogers’ speech, then later out again after Israel approved the Rogers Plan. The columnist concludes that, historically, broad Israeli consensus has deterred outside pressure, and that after the next election a wide unity government should again be formed.
