The Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz has threatened to resign if Benjamin Netanyahu fails to adopt an agreed plan for Gaza, calling into question the future of the Israeli government.
During a press conference on Saturday, Gantz announced that if a plan for postwar governance of the territory is not consolidated and approved by 8 June, his opposition National Unity party will withdraw from the coalition government.
. . .
On Thursday, defence minister, Yoav Gallant, challenged Netanyahu over the same issue, saying he would not permit any solution where Israeli military or civil governance were in the territory. Gallant’s comments were immediately backed by his fellow minister Gantz, Netanyahu’s main political rival in the emergency coalition, plunging Israel’s leadership into a highly public row.
Holy shit, this is a REALLY misleading headline.
if it was just him quitting, that would be terrible; it would be an anti-war person giving up their power to legally obstruct the war.
It’s “his opposition National Unity party will withdraw from the coalition government”. Unless this article is missing something, wouldn’t breaking up the coalition just basically completely paralyse Israel??
Netanyahu doesn’t need Gantz’s party to remain in power. They’d lose a more moderate voice in the war cabinet. The Unity government would probably lose legitimacy in the eyes of most Israelis. It would be very bad for Netanyahu politically. It would also probably be good for Gantz politically, as recent polling suggests that he might be starting to get some of Netanyahu’s stink on him.
OK, but the subtitle makes it pretty clear. As does tbe, you know, the article.
Is this good…? Do they have enough influence to make a difference.
It’s complicated. They don’t have the ability to bring down the government but both Gantz and Gallant are much more popular than Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s choice (again) comes down to placating the far-right to keep his government in power in the short-term at the expense of further alienating the Israeli public. If he bows to this pressure, the far-right might topple his government immediately. All paths probably lead to electoral (then legal) doom for Netanyahu at some point.
I wonder if he’s the kind of maniacal leader that puts maintaining power and control first because he genuinely believes he has a plan to better his people, or…
is he’s the maniacal leader that puts maintaining power and control first because… power and control are simply all that matters…
I wonder which is more dangerous.
I wonder if it matters at this point.
He’s looking at jail time in some corruption cases IIRC
This is the thing. Netanyahu is a sociopath who needs a forever war or else he eventually has to face the music. Without outside military intervention, this only ends in one of two ways:
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either Bibi drags it out long enough to ethnically cleanse all of Gaza, claim he defeated Hamas, and memory-hole the intelligence failures that allowed the October 7 attacks to succeed in the first place, or
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he loses control of his political coalition, elections are called, and he’s quickly removed from his PM position, put on trial for corruption and then thrown in prison for what will probably be the rest of his life.
Prolonging the war doesn’t guarantee he won’t end up in scenario 2 anyway, but from his perspective at the very least he’s running out the clock. Dead Gazans (and to a lesser extent dead Israelis) don’t matter to him.
I mean there’s a reason he’s been propping up a Hamas for so long. Also a reason why he failed act on intelligence warning him of October 7th.
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Yup. There was a trial a a year or two ago (maybe three now) before he got into power again. I don’t remember it concluding because he was elected while it was taking place.
It’s still ongoing.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The press conference came just hours after the Israel Defense Forces said it had recovered the body of another hostage, Ron Benjamin, 53, who had been taking part in a cycle ride near the border with Gaza when Hamas launched its bloody attack on 7 October.
Gallant’s comments were immediately backed by his fellow minister Gantz, Netanyahu’s main political rival in the emergency coalition, plunging Israel’s leadership into a highly public row.
Despite domestic pressure over the fate of the remaining hostages still held in Gaza – more than a quarter of whom are thought to be dead – including weekly demonstrations in Tel Aviv, hopes of a deal to release them have ebbed.
The unity that brought traumatised Israelis together in the immediate wake of the cross-border attack when Hamas and other Palestinian groups killed 1,200 people and took 254 hostage, has long since splintered.
As Israeli forces pushed further into Rafah, which had been the main gateway for aid into all of Gaza, humanitarian organisations warned that not enough food was getting into an enclave which the US says faces an imminent famine.
Humanitarian assistance has begun to arrive via a US-made pier, but the US aid chief said the new sea corridor could not be a substitute for land crossings, and warned that deliveries of food and fuel had slowed to dangerously low levels.
The original article contains 940 words, the summary contains 227 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Idiocy.
He’d do greater-good by remaining in-place & continuing insisting on getting things right, then he would be getting out of abuse’s way, & facilitating its more-complete highjacking of the country.
Same with all the leftists who vacated-authority-roles “in protest”, handing them to MAGA enforcers.
Giving authority to the ones you “claim” you oppose, “in protest”, is self-delusion, not means-of-victory.
Fools, ruled by feelings, instead of by objectivity & reason, giving greater leverage to their claimed enemy.
No point in pretending that that “strategy” is going to actually-win, is there?
Just throwing leverage away, for sake of feelings & social-assertion.
And then, later, whining that they’re not winning…
