I have said from the beginning that Gaza was just phase one of a Netanyahu operation to get the US into war with Iran.
Nothing about that has changed, and nothing about it can change, short of the US stopping weapons shipments to Israel (which can’t happen).
Gantz could be throwing a tantrum over something we’re not aware of, he could be making a power-play with the Biden Administration to try to seize leadership, he could just personally hate Bibi, Bibi could have forced him out because he wants him replaced – there are all sorts of different possibilities here, and we won’t know why until some other high-ranking official gets pissed off and tells the media the real story.
It’s not about lacking a “day after” plan for Gaza, however. No one in the Jewish government ever thought it was possible to have a “day after” plan for Gaza. They have over a decade of white papers explaining why this invasion was impossible.
The Israeli politician and former military chief Benny Gantz has followed through on a threat to resign from Benjamin Netanyahu’s emergency war cabinet, leaving the prime minister more reliant than ever on far-right elements of his coalition government.
Gantz, a major Netanyahu rival, former defence minister and leader of the centre-right National Unity party, joined the three-man war cabinet as a minister without portfolio in the aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October attack, a move he said was for the sake of the country’s unity.
But as Israel’s war effort in Gaza dragged on, disagreements over strategy and how best to bring the 250 Israeli hostages home spilled into the open, culminating in Gantz accusing the prime minister of pushing strategic considerations such as a hostage deal aside for his own political survival. Last month, he gave Netanyahu an ultimatum of 8 June to present concrete “day after” plans for the Gaza Strip.
Gantz delayed his resignation speech by a day after the unexpected rescue of four Israeli hostages in an operation that the health ministry in Gaza said killed 274 people and injured another 696. The withdrawal of his party also means Gadi Eisenkot, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) general and war cabinet observer, and the minister without portfolio, Chili Tropper, are also stepping down.
“Netanyahu is preventing us from progressing towards a true victory,” Gantz said in a televised address on Sunday night. “For this reason we are leaving the emergency government today, with a heavy heart, yet wholeheartedly.”
Gantz also called on Netanyahu to set a date for elections, adding: “Do not let our nation tear apart.”
Oh, sure. Calls for elections are going to make him want to free the hostages and end the war.
That doesn’t even make sense. As long as the war is ongoing, there cannot be elections.
The move does not immediately pose a threat to Netanyahu, as the prime minister still controls a majority coalition in parliament. It does, however, affect the Israeli government’s respectability on the international stage; centrist Gantz is well liked in Washington, where he was seen as a useful brake on Netanyahu, and his absence means the prime minister’s far-right allies are likely to now have more sway over the trajectory of the war in Gaza and the growing threat of war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
What this does, in effect, is speed up Bibi’s need to escalate the war outside of Gaza and into Lebanon (or even the West Bank).
Whatever the goofy media may claim, this does not present a “problem” or even a “challenge” for Bibi.
