BREAKING NEWS ISRAELI GOVERNMENT CRUMBLING GANTZ RESIGNS WITH OTHER KEY FIGURES
June 10, 2024Israeli minister Benny Gantz announced his resignation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s emergency government on Sunday, withdrawing the only centrist power in the embattled leader’s far-right coalition amid a months-long war in Gaza.
The departure of Gantz’s centrist party will not pose an immediate threat to the government. But it could have a serious impact nonetheless, leaving Netanyahu reliant on hardliners, with no end in sight to the Gaza war and a possible escalation in fighting with Lebanese Hezbollah.
Last month, Gantz presented Netanyahu with a June 8 deadline to come up with a clear day-after strategy for Gaza, where Israel has been pressing a devastating military offensive against the ruling Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Netanyahu brushed off the ultimatum soon after it was given.
On Sunday, Gantz said politics was clouding fateful strategic decisions in Netanyahu’s cabinet. Quitting while hostages were still in Gaza and soldiers fighting there was an excruciating decision, he said.
“Netanyahu is preventing us from advancing toward true victory,” Gantz said in a televised news conference. “That is why we are leaving the emergency government today, with a heavy heart but with full confidence.”
Netanyahu responded in a social media post, telling Gantz it was no time to abandon the battlefront.
With Gantz gone, Netanyahu would lose the backing of a centrist bloc that has helped broaden support for the government in Israel and abroad, at a time of increasing diplomatic and domestic pressure eight months into the Gaza war.
National Unity MK, Gadi Eisenkot, followed party leader Benny Gantz out of the coalition and gave up his spot as an observer in the war cabinet now being dismantled by the departure.
Brig. Gen. Avi Rosenfeld, the head of the Israel Defense Force’s Gaza Division, also submitted his resignation in addition to Minister Chili Tropper from the National Unity Party.
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