Israeli War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz threatened to resign unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu establishes a post-war plan for the Gaza Strip.
Gantz set a June 8 deadline for a plan aimed at achieving six “strategic objectives,” including ending Hamas rule in Gaza and establishing a multinational civilian administration for the territory.
“If they put the national over the personal, they will find in us partners in the fight,” he said. “But if they choose the path of fanatics and lead the entire nation into the abyss, we will be forced to resign from the government,” he continued.
Netanyahu dismissed the comments as “empty words” that would mean “defeat for Israel.”
The war cabinet was established in the days after the Oct. 7 attacks, in which fighters from Hamas and other militant groups killed about 1,200 people and took another 252 hostage after entering Israel from Gaza.
Gantz’s comments come just days after another member of the war cabinet, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, urged Netanyahu to publicly declare that Israel had no plans to assume civilian and military rule in Gaza.
Gallant said he had raised the issue repeatedly for months but had received no response.
The episode shows a growing division in the Israeli war cabinet and Netanyahu’s government.
Gantz and Gallant say maintaining control over Gaza would increase Israel’s security risks, while others, including far-right members of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, believe some control over Gaza is necessary to defeat Hamas.
In a televised speech Saturday, Gantz told Netanyahu that “the people of Israel are watching.”
“We must choose between Zionism and cynicism, between unity and factions, between responsibility and anarchy, between victory and disaster,” he said.
Among the six strategic objectives it set were the return of all Israeli and foreign hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza and the return of Palestinian civilians displaced to northern Gaza by September 1.
He also said Israel should continue to seek normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia as part of a “comprehensive process to create an alliance with the free world and the West against Iran and its allies.”
In response to the speech, Netanyahu said that meeting Gantz’s demands would lead to “the end of the war and a defeat for Israel, the abandonment of most of the hostages, leaving Hamas intact and the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
American, European, Arab and Palestinian administration
The country’s army chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, has also privately pressed Netanyahu on the need for a “morning after” strategy, according to Israeli media reports.
In recent days, the Israeli military has re-entered areas of northern Gaza previously declared free of Hamas, raising questions about the government’s strategy to eliminate the group.
Fighting resumed particularly in the Jabalia area near Gaza City, where Israel says Hamas began trying to regroup.
Israeli troops and tanks advanced further towards the district this Saturday. Palestinian doctors said one of the Israeli attacks killed 15 people and wounded dozens more.
Halevi reportedly argued that in the absence of a diplomatic process to establish a governing body other than Hamas, the military will be forced to launch repeated campaigns to keep the group at bay.
Gantz proposed an American, European, Arab and Palestinian administration that could manage civil affairs in Gaza while laying the groundwork for a future alternative government.
He added that, in the meantime, Israel could maintain some degree of “security control.”
Last week, Israel launched an operation in the southern city of Rafah, which had previously been ordered to evacuate civilians from other parts of Gaza, saying it needed to enter the city to attack the last remaining Hamas strongholds.
The operation has sparked renewed concern for the safety of civilians, and Philippe Lazzarini, director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, said some 800,000 people were again displaced.
“Since the war in Gaza began, Palestinians have been forced to flee multiple times in search of safety they never found,” he said.
“When people move, they are exposed, without safe passage or protection. Each time, they are forced to leave behind the few belongings they have: mattresses, tents, kitchen utensils and basic supplies that they cannot carry or pay to transport,” he added.
“The claim that people in Gaza can move to ‘safe’ or ‘humanitarian’ areas is false. Each time, it puts civilian lives at serious risk,” Lazzarini said.
Late Saturday, Israel also issued new evacuation orders for parts of northern Gaza, saying armed groups had fired rockets at Israel.
Hamas claimed that Israel’s “brutal attacks” in Jabalia had killed dozens of civilians and wounded hundreds more.
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