Will the withdrawal of Ben Gantz from the Israeli war cabinet lead to a crisis?

According to the international group Tasnim news agency, the forces Since the defeat in the November 2022 elections, Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents have been trying to make up for the losses and lay the groundwork for the dissolution of Netanyahu’s coalition cabinet, but the decisive victory of the right-religious wing with 64 seats severely limited the possibility of this faction’s effective acting. During the one-and-a-half-year period of the Bennett-Lapid cabinet and in general the years 2019-2022, due to the much smaller numerical difference between the supporters of the cabinets and the opposition faction, the ability of the opposition was much greater than now.

During the 17 months that have passed since the formation of Netanyahu’s new cabinet, the Israeli regime has experienced two major events; The first event was the crisis of judicial reforms that lasted for 9 months and the protests of supporters and opponents of that society and the Israeli governing bodies were severely divided and incidentally provided the ground for the Al-Aqsa storm attack. The second most important event in which the Israeli regime has been completely involved in the last 7 months and overshadowed all aspects of Zionist life was the attack on October 7, 2023 and the war in Gaza.

Both events dealt serious blows to the political credibility of Netanyahu and his coalition. But Israel’s surprise on October 7, 2023 is far more important. About 50 years ago, during the 1973 war, a similar event took place and the armies of Egypt and Syria attacked the Israeli regime by surprise.

War cabinet, Netanyahu’s revivalist

Benny Gantz, head of the coalition of domestic unity since October 12, 2023 He became a member of the war cabinet of the Zionist regime. Although Gantz was able to convince Netanyahu to accept his conditions that the members of the war cabinet remain limited to three members with the right to vote, but in the end, after 7 months of the war, the formation of this cabinet resulted in several consequences in Netanyahu’s favor and to his detriment. The opposition has ended;

1. The October 7 strike has put Netanyahu, who has been presenting himself as Israel’s “Mr. Security” for years, in a precarious situation. Was. In the initial polls after the October 7th attack, more than 80% of Zionists wanted to oust Netanyahu. The first consequence of Gantz’s joining the Israeli war cabinet was a sharp reduction in criticism of Netanyahu and his passing through critical days. Now, nearly 8 months after the war, polls show that the level of opposition to Netanyahu has moderated. The dismissal of Netanyahu’s cabinet was normal. The presence of extreme right-wing figures such as Itamar Ben Guer and Betsalel Smutrich as cabinet ministers, as well as religious figures who advance a limited and self-interested agenda, had led to the formation of severe dissatisfaction in public opinion. The Zionist community considered the judicial reform crisis and the October 7 surprise to be directly the handiwork of Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing cabinet, but the formation of a war cabinet and taking over the management of the war pushed the great cabinet to the sidelines and caused Ben Guer and Smotrich to claim themselves as criticize the policies of the war cabinet and reduce the serious criticism of the grand cabinet. With the presence of Gantz, Gideon Sarr and several independent figures, it had an internal dispute and Sarr left this coalition in March 2024. On the one hand, the departure of Sarr caused Gantz’s position in the polls to be weakened by 4-5 seats, and on the other hand, the New Hope Party of Sarr also faced the challenge of conflict with the limit of 3.25%. In most of the polls, this party failed to pass the electoral threshold after separating from Gantz, and this eventually created a gap in the ranks of Bibi’s (Netanyahu) opponents.
2. Finally, it seems that Netanyahu created a rift between the army and the cabinet by forming a war cabinet in which 3 of the 5 members (Benny Gantz, Yoav Gallant and Gadi Eisenkot) were army generals. Netanyahu will be covered to a large extent and both sides will ignore previous differences during the war.

2 opposition initiative

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s opposition parties who use the time to They don’t see their benefit, they have put more serious initiatives in their agenda to bring down Netanyahu. Two weeks ago, Benny Gantz made the continuation of his presence in the war cabinet dependent on the decision on 5 strategic issues. He gave Netanyahu until June 8 to decide on these measures, and considering Israel’s complicated situation in the war, it can be said that Gantz has set conditions for not doing so. Netanyahu flatly rejected these conditions. In response to this action, one of the representatives of the Gantz coalition submitted the bill to dissolve the Knesset and hold early elections.

Although Netanyahu’s opponents have a total of 56 representatives in the Knesset, and the gap of 8 representatives between the opposition and the ruling coalition greatly reduces the chances of passing this bill. but some sources close to the opposition have raised news about the possibility of some representatives of the Likud party joining this initiative and claimed that the meeting of the opposition leaders was precisely to convey the message of “unity of the opposition” to the dissatisfied representatives of the Likud party. However, the opposition parties need 5 positive votes from Likud party representatives to pass this bill, which is a relatively large number and the chances of achieving it should be considered extremely low.

Although the opposition strategy faces many difficulties at the political level, the strength of the opposition is the relative dissatisfaction of the Zionist community with Netanyahu’s cabinet. As a result of Gantz’s departure from the war cabinet and the start of the opposition’s actions, if he is not welcomed even by Netanyahu’s party members, he will send this message to the society that the season of protests has arrived.