Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces growing pressure from his right-wing coalition government amid sharp disagreements over the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is nearing its 90th day with no end in sight to the war or a deal for a pause in hostilities.
Netanyahu cancelled a meeting of Israel’s war cabinet on Thursday night that was meant to discuss the plan for the “day after” the war after fierce opposition to the meeting from far-right members of the coalition.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of the ultranationalist Jewish Power party said the subject was outside of the war cabinet’s mandate. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist party announced it was holding its own meeting in protest over his exclusion from the discussion.
Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are in the larger security cabinet but are not part of the war cabinet, whose main members are Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and opposition leader Benny Gantz.
“[Smotrich] didn’t want that discussion [on the day after] to take place,” media’s Alan Fisher, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, said on Friday. “He is very much against the Palestinian Authority [PA] having any rule in Gaza post the war.”
Under such pressure, Netanyahu decided the war cabinet would not discuss the issue, which will now be taken up by the security cabinet on Tuesday.
The United States has suggested the PA should rule over Gaza after Israel achieves its stated goal of eliminating Hamas, whose October 7 assault on southern Israel triggered the war.
“Netanyahu cancelled the war cabinet, worried it would fracture his coalition, fracture his government and put his position as prime minister at risk,” Fisher said.
The war cabinet was also meant to “discuss a deal with Hamas – negotiated by the Americans, the Qataris and the Egyptians – about exchanging captives for Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails”, our correspondent added.
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