Gantz threatens to quit Israeli cabinet over Gaza plan
Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz has demanded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commit to an agreed vision for the Gaza conflict that includes stipulating who might rule the territory after the war with Hamas.
War Cabinet member Benny Gantz holds a press conference at the Knesset in Jerusalem, April 3, 2024. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90
Gantz told a press conference he wanted the war cabinet to form a six-point plan by June 8.
If his expectations are not met, he said, he will withdraw his centrist National Union party from the conservative prime minister’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.
The war cabinet was formed just days after the October 7 Hamas attacks.
Gantz, a 64-year-old retired army general and former defence minister, joined the war cabinet as a minister without portfolio.
On Wednesday, Gallant demanded clarity on post-war plans and for Netanyahu to forswear any military reoccupation of the Gaza Strip.
If the prime minister were to do that, he would risk angering ultranationalist 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.
Israeli troops and tanks pushed into parts of a congested northern Gaza Strip district of Jabalia on Saturday that they had previously skirted in the more than seven-month-old war, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians, medics and residents said.
Israel’s forces also took over some ground in Rafah, a southern city next to the Egyptian border that is packed with displaced people and where the launch this month of a long-threatened incursion to crush Hamas hold-outs has alarmed Egypt and the US.
Israel has conducted renewed military sweeps this month of parts of northern Gaza where it had declared the end of major operations in January. At the time, it also predicted its forces would return to prevent a regrouping by the Palestinian Islamist group that rules Gaza.
Report: Reuters
