Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli rejected calls for him to apologize to residents of Israel’s Gaza border areas over the October 7 massacre, arguing instead that those who promoted the Oslo Accords and Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza bear responsibility for policies that helped create the conditions for the disaster. The comments were made in an interview with Kan Reshet Bet.

Chikli acknowledged that the catastrophic security failure took place while the current government was in office, but argued that an apology would imply that government officials had deliberately caused the disaster.

He instead directed criticism at supporters of the Oslo process and the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, declaring that those who pushed those policies should be the ones apologizing.

Chikli maintained that he personally opposed both Oslo and disengagement and rejected what he described as an effort to portray the government’s failures as malicious rather than failures of judgment and security.

At the same time, he acknowledged that the failures surrounding October 7 require examination and that Israeli security systems significantly underperformed.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)