Jerusalem:

Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz said Saturday he would resign from the body unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved a post-war plan for the Gaza Strip.

“The war cabinet must formulate and approve by June 8 an action plan that will lead to the realisation of six strategic goals of national importance.. (or) we will be forced to resign from the government,” Gantz said, referring to his party, in a televised address directed at Netanyahu.

Gantz said the six goals included toppling Hamas, ensuring Israeli security control over the Palestinian territory and returning Israeli hostages.

“Along with maintaining Israeli security control, establish an American, European, Arab and Palestinian administration that will manage civilian affairs in the Gaza Strip and lay the foundation for a future alternative that is not Hamas or (Mahmud) Abbas,” he said, referring to the president of the Palestinian Authority.

He also urged the normalisation of ties with Saudi Arabia “as part of an overall move that will create an alliance with the free world and the Arab world against Iran and its affiliates”.

Netanyahu responded to Gantz’s threat on Saturday by slamming the minister’s demands as “washed-up words whose meaning is clear: the end of the war and a defeat for Israel, the abandoning of most of the hostages, leaving Hamas intact and the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

The Israeli army has been battling Hamas across the Gaza Strip for more than seven months. But broad splits have emerged in the Israeli war cabinet in recent days after Hamas fighters regrouped in northern Gaza, an area where Israel previously said the group had been neutralised.

Netanyahu came under personal attack from Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday for failing to rule out an Israeli government in Gaza after the war.

The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s attack on October 7 on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Hamas also seized about 250 hostages, 124 of whom Israel estimates remain in Gaza, including 37 the military says are dead.

Israel’s military retaliation against Hamas has killed at least 35,386 people, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry, and an Israeli siege has brought dire food shortages and the threat of famine.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Jerusalem:

Two Israeli ministers publicly opposed a Gaza truce deal Sunday, saying Benjamin Netanyahu’s government had no right to exist if it failed to invade Rafah, Hamas’s last bastion in the Palestinian territory.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and war cabinet minister Benny Gantz called for Hamas to be destroyed, as planned by the government when it went to war after the Islamist movement’s October 7 attack.

“If you decide to raise a white flag and cancel the plan to occupy Rafah aimed at destroying Hamas in order to restore security to Israel, then the government headed by you will have no right to exist,” Smotrich wrote on X, addressing the premier.

“The Egyptian deal is a humiliating surrender… it sentences the hostages to death, and above all, constitutes an immediate existential danger to the state of Israel.”

Gantz, a former army chief and defence minister, also pushed for Rafah to be invaded.

“Entering Rafah is important in the long struggle against Hamas,” he said in a statement issued by his party.

“If a responsible outline for the return of hostages backed by the entire defence establishment is achieved, which doesn’t entail ending the war, and the ministers who led the government on October 7 prevent it — the government will not have the right to continue to exist.”

Diplomatic efforts have intensified to reach a truce and hostage-release deal in Gaza amid growing calls against a ground assault on Rafah.

Netanyahu has vowed to send troops into Rafah, where more than 1.5 million civilians have taken refuge, but is under tremendous international and domestic pressure to strike a deal to free the hostages.

A Hamas delegation will arrive in Egypt on Monday to deliver the group’s response to Israel’s new hostage and truce proposal that is reportedly backed by Egypt, a senior Hamas official told AFP.

The Axios news website, citing two Israeli officials, reported that Israel’s latest proposal includes a willingness to discuss the “restoration of sustainable calm” in Gaza after hostages are released.

It is the first time in the nearly seven-month war that Israeli leaders have suggested they are open to discussing an end to the war, Axios said.

Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been trying to mediate a new truce ever since a one-week halt to the fighting in November saw 80 Israeli hostages exchanged for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

Israel estimates that 129 hostages seized on October 7 are still being held in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 34,454 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)