Benny Gantz, the leader of the centrists in Israel’s war cabinet, is set to resign on Saturday, along with his party, as his three-week ultimatum to Binyamin Netanyahu to deliver a comprehensive strategy for ending the war comes to an end.
Gantz, who according to some opinion polls would replace Netanyahu as prime minister if elections were held today, has announced a press conference for Saturday evening. Close sources say he has reached the end of his tether and does not believe he can influence decision-making any longer. In a meeting between the two following a session of the war cabinet on Wednesday, Gantz informed Netanyahu of his decision and said he no longer felt he had any significant influence on Israel’s policy.
Along with Gantz, Gadi Eisenkot, a fellow minister in the war cabinet and his colleague in the centrist National Unity Party, is expected to resign. The two were in opposition to Netanyahu before the Hamas attack on October 7 prompted the war in Gaza and led to the creation of an emergency coalition in Israel.
Gantz threatened to leave three weeks ago unless Netanyahu came up with a strategy for the next stages of the war in Gaza. He wanted a plan to secure the release the 124 Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, dozens of whom are already assumed to be dead; a timetable for the disarmament of Gaza; and an internationally-backed administration that would take over its civilian affairs. He also called for an end to the conflict with Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon so that tens of thousands of Israelis who have been forced to leave their homes could return.
Netanyahu has refused to present such a strategy, insisting that it is premature while Israel is still fighting to “destroy Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in Gaza”, leaving Gantz with little choice. He claims that Netanyahu’s real reason for not formulating a clear policy in Gaza is his reliance on the far-right parties in his coalition who are demanding that Israel continue a full-scale war in Gaza and make no secret of their plans to re-establish Israeli settlements there. Netanyahu has said that is not on the agenda but he has refrained from setting out any other plans.
While waiting for the deadline to expire, members of Gantz’s party have tabled in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, motions to form a national commission of inquiry to investigate the war and to dissolve the Knesset, bringing forward elections. Both of these moves are direct threats to Netanyahu who fears that an independent commission, headed by a supreme court judge, would ask uncomfortable questions of his policies in the years before the war that allowed Hamas to entrench itself in Gaza. He is loath to relinquish his hold on power for the next two and a half years of the Knesset’s term.
If, as expected, Gantz and his party quit, Netanyahu will still have a majority in the Knesset based on the original parties of the coalition he formed in 2022. But without the centrists in his war cabinet, it will become more difficult to fend off demands of the far-right who are urging him to ignore pressure from the White House to accept a temporary ceasefire in Gaza that could lead to the release of some of the hostages.
Without Gantz in government, calls for an early election and Netanyahu’s resignation are likely to grow. The few remaining pragmatic members of his own Likud party, chief among them the defence minister Yoav Gallant, will also demand clearer and more pragmatic policies that the far-right opposed. Gantz’s departure is not the death knell of the government but is the harbinger of increasing instability which will make it more difficult for Netanyahu to continue in office.
THE TIMES
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