Israeli minister Benny Gantz announced his resignation from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s emergency government, 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.
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 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 a 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.
While his coalition remains in control of 64 of parliament’s 120 seats, Netanyahu will now have to rely more heavily on the political backing of ultra-nationalist parties, whose leaders angered Washington even before the war and who have since called for a complete Israeli occupation of Gaza.
