- War Cabinet member Benny Gantz has threatened to leave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government if there is no plan for post-war order in the Gaza Strip
Israeli War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz demanded on Saturday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commit to an agreed vision for the Gaza conflict that would include stipulating who might rule the territory after the war with Hamas.
Gantz told a press conference he wanted the war cabinet to form a six-point plan by 8 June. If his expectations are not met, he said, he will withdraw his centrist party from the conservative premier’s broadened emergency coalition.
Gantz, a retired top Israeli General who opinion polls show is Netanyahu’s most formidable political rival, gave no date for the prospective walkout but his challenge could increase strains on an increasingly unwieldy wartime government.
Netanyahu appears outflanked in his own inner war cabinet, where he, Gantz and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant alone have votes. On Wednesday, Gallant demanded clarity on post-war plans and for Netanyahu to forswear any military reoccupation of Gaza.
If the prime minister were to do that, he would risk angering ultra-nationalist coalition parties that have called for Gaza to be annexed and settled. Losing them could topple Netanyahu, who before the war failed to enlist more centrist partners, given his trial on corruption charges he denies.
“Personal and political considerations have begun to penetrate the Holy of Holies of Israel’s national security,” Gantz said.
“A small minority has seized the bridge of the Israeli ship and is piloting it toward the rocky shoal.”
Gantz said his proposed six-point plan would include bringing a temporary US-European-Arab-Palestinian system of civil administration for Gaza while Israel retains security control.
It would also institute equitable national service for all Israelis, including ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are now exempted from the military draft and have two parties in Netanyahu’s coalition determined to preserve the waiver.
Gantz’s televised address came just three days after Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, a member of the prime minister’s own Likud party, issued a similar denunciation of Netanyahu’s governance, or lack thereof. Thus both of Netanyahu’s ministerial colleagues in the key, three-strong war cabinet have now told the public that the prime minister is leading Israel to disaster.
Gallant demanded that Netanyahu publicly rule out long-term Israeli civil or military governance of Gaza, as sought by far-right elements in the coalition, saying he simply “will not agree” to it. Gantz, for his part, required Netanyahu to commit to six specific strategic goals for the nation, and warned that his party would bolt the government if the prime minister did not do so by June 8.
On the face of it, Gantz has more political leverage than Gallant (who was fired by Netanyahu 14 months ago, when he correctly warned that the coalition’s ultra-divisive judicial overhaul plans were undermining Israel’s security, and reinstated two weeks later). Without the eight seats in the 120-member Knesset that Gantz’s broadly centrist National Unity Party gives the coalition, Netanyahu would be returned to the 64-member right, far-right and ultra-Orthodox bloc with which he won the November 2022 election, and thus more nakedly vulnerable to the pressures and demands of his extremist partners. Such a government is likely to leak international support even faster than the current one has managed, and face far sharper pressure from key global partners, including in Washington.
Netanyahu responded to Gantz’s threat by criticising the minister’s demands as “washed-up words whose meaning is clear: the end of the war and a defeat for Israel, the abandoning of most of the hostages, leaving Hamas intact and the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
Ron Benjamin was “murdered during the October 7th massacre at the Mefalsim intersection, the Israeli military said in a statement. Source: Supplied / Hostages Missing Families Forum
It comes as the Israeli army said on Saturday that troops had retrieved the body of hostage Ron Benjamin from the war-torn Gaza Strip after he was “murdered” during the October 7 Hamas attack.
Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Benjamin’s body was recovered in the same operation that saw troops retrieve the remains of three other hostages, which was announced on Friday.
Benjamin was “murdered during the October 7th massacre at the Mefalsim intersection, and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas militants”, the military said in a separate statement.
“His body was rescued along with the bodies of Yitzhak Gelerenter, Shani Louk, and Amit Buskila … based on precise intelligence obtained during the interrogations of terrorists who were apprehended in the Gaza Strip.”
The military said on Friday troops had recovered the bodies of Louk, Buskila and Gelerenter from Gaza after they were taken hostage during the attack on the Nova music festival.
Israel has bombarded Gaza since Hamas’ 7 October attack in which more than 1,200 people, including an estimated 30 children, were killed and over 200 hostages taken, according to the Israeli government.
More than 35,303 people have been killed in Gaza since 7 October, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
The 7 October attack was a significant escalation in the long-standing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
@SBS
