Gaza: Netanyahu dissolves the Israeli war government after it leaves

Gantz and Eisenkot joined a national unity government with Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition days after the war began in October.

The two former IDF chiefs of staff announced their resignations on June 9, with Gantz saying that the prime minister’s leadership “prevents us from getting closer to true victory.”

Immediately afterwards, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said he had written to Netanyahu to demand that he be added to the war cabinet.

On Sunday night, Netanyahu informed ministers that he had decided to dissolve the decision-making body rather than bring in new members.

“the [war] The Cabinet was in a coalition agreement with Gantz at his request. “Once Gantz leaves, there is no longer a need to form a government.” According to the Jerusalem Post.

Haaretz reported Some issues previously discussed by the war cabinet will be moved for discussion in the 14-member security cabinet, which includes Mr. Ben Gvir and his colleague, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

She said that sensitive decisions would be addressed in a “smaller consultative forum” expected to include Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, and the head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, Aryeh Deri. The three men were in the war cabinet alongside Prime Minister Mr. Gantz and Mr. Eisenkot.

Israeli army spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari insisted on Monday that such moves would not affect its operations.

He told reporters, “Cabinet members are being changed and the style is changing. We have leadership and we know the chain of command. We work according to the chain of command. This is democracy.”

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7, during which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 37,340 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in the Strip.

There were further signs of tension in the Israeli government in the past day, as Mr Netanyahu and his far-right ministers criticized the IDF’s decision to introduce a daytime “tactical pause in military activity” near the southern Gaza city of Rafah to allow more humanitarian aid shipments.

This stop is intended to allow trucks to collect aid from the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom border crossing, southeast of Rafah, and then travel safely to reach the main north-south road inside Gaza. Supplies have stopped at the crossing since Israel began a military operation in Rafah last month.

But Ben Gvir criticized this policy and described it as foolish, while the Israeli media quoted Netanyahu as saying: “We have a state that has an army, not an army that has a state.”

The Israeli military responded by saying that the pauses did not mean that the fighting in southern Gaza would stop, which created confusion about exactly what was happening on the ground.

The United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the largest humanitarian organization in Gaza, said that fighting was continuing in Rafah and elsewhere in the south on Monday, and that “practically nothing has changed yet.”

Meanwhile, the Israeli army said that its forces “continue their targeted operations based on intelligence information in the Rafah area.” It added that it found weapons, struck booby-trapped facilities, and eliminated “a number of terrorists” in the Tal al-Sultan area.

With little sign of progress towards a full ceasefire in Gaza, there have been new warnings from the Israeli military that a lower-level conflict with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah now threatens to turn into a wider war.

In the wake of a recent escalation in gunfire, a senior US diplomat returns to the region to try to ease tensions on the Israeli-Lebanese border.