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Benny Gantz has threatened to leave Israel’s government if it does not commit to a new plan for the war with Hamas and its aftermath, in an ultimatum that raises political pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In a televised statement on Saturday evening, Gantz, an opposition figure and former general who joined Netanyahu’s coalition after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, demanded the government agree a six-point plan, including a template for Gaza’s postwar governance, by June 8.
If his demands are not met, Gantz said he would withdraw his centrist National Unity party — which polls suggest would emerge from new elections as the biggest group — from the government.
“The choice is in your hands,” Gantz said, addressing Netanyahu directly. “The Netanyahu of a decade ago would have done the right thing. Are you willing to do the right and patriotic thing today?”
Netanyahu’s office accused Gantz of choosing to “issue an ultimatum to the prime minister instead of issuing an ultimatum to Hamas”.
“The conditions set by Gantz are washed-up words whose meaning is clear: the end of the war and defeat for Israel,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement.
Gantz’s ultimatum brings to a head months of tensions within Netanyahu’s government over the handling of the war, with Israel still far from achieving its goals of destroying Hamas and freeing the roughly 130 Israeli hostages it still holds in Gaza. At the same time it is facing intense international criticism over the soaring humanitarian toll of its assault on the Palestinian enclave.
The departure of the National Unity party would not automatically topple Netanyahu’s five-party coalition or trigger early elections, as the prime minister and his far-right and ultrareligious allies would still control 64 seats in Israel’s 120-seat parliament.
But it would mark the end of cross-party co-operation that followed the October 7 attack. It would also make Netanyahu increasingly beholden to the two extreme right parties in his coalition, led by finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Both men have demanded that Israel adopt a more aggressive approach to the war, as well as pushing for the re-establishment of Jewish settlements in Gaza — considered illegal by most of the international community — once the war is over.
On Sunday, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich rallied to Netanyahu’s support.
“Benny Gantz is a small leader and a big deceiver who from the first moment when he joined this government has been focused mainly on efforts to dismantle it,” said Ben-Gvir. He cited Gantz’s trip to Washington earlier this year, and meetings in previous years with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as signs of weakness. “The time has come to dismantle the preconception cabinet and to change policy [to one that is] resolute, powerful and decisive.”
Smotrich wrote on X: “Benny, the dithering in the war is because of you and because of your colleagues in the preconception cabinet that even after October 7 have continued to push to halt the war and to establish a Palestinian state under American pressure.” He demanded that Netanyahu decide Israel should have full security control of the Gaza Strip.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who is expected to travel to Israel on Sunday after a stop in Saudi Arabia, is seeking to push the Biden administration’s position that Israel should allow the relatively secular West Bank-based Palestinian Authority to retake control of the Gaza Strip.
Sullivan met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Sunday morning to discuss the war in Gaza and “a credible pathway towards the two-state solution” by ending the conflict and facilitating the entry of humanitarian aid, according to the Saudi state news agency.
In the six-point plan that he set out on Saturday, Gantz said that, alongside Israeli security control, an international “civilian governance mechanism” for the enclave should be set up with US, European, Arab and Palestinian involvement.
He also said the plan should include the return of the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza; the defeat of Hamas and demilitarisation of the enclave; the return of Israelis to areas in the north of the country that have been evacuated since the start of the war; steps towards normalisation with Saudi Arabia; and a framework for expanding Israel’s military service to draft more ultraorthodox Jews.
Gantz framed his ultimatum to Netanyahu as a choice between his vision and that espoused by Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and their allies. “If you choose the path of fanatics and lead the entire nation to the abyss, we will be forced to leave the government,” he said.
“The people of Israel are watching you. You must choose between Zionism and cynicism, between unity and factionalism, between responsibility and lawlessness, and between victory and disaster.”
Netanyahu’s critics have repeatedly accused him of allowing his decision-making in relation to the war to be coloured by a desire to preserve his coalition, which would collapse were Ben-Gvir and Smotrich to leave.
Earlier this week, defence minister Yoav Gallant slammed Netanyahu for the lack of a postwar plan for Gaza, urging him to put “national priorities above all other considerations, even with the possibility of personal or political costs”.
Netanyahu has rejected accusations he is putting personal considerations ahead of the war, and said in response to Gallant that any discussion of the “day after” Hamas was “detached from reality” until Israel achieved military victory in Gaza.
Additional reporting by Ahmed Al Omran in Jeddah
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