Hopefully This Leads to Bibi's Downfall

Benny Gantz, head of the National Unity Party, and a member of the war cabinet since the start of the Gaza war, has resigned his post as minister without portfolio.

A month ago, he demanded that Netanyahu provide plans for what happens after the war, and when these were not forthcoming, he quit:

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.

(emphasis mine)

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.”

I hope that this precipitates Netanyahu being forced to step down as PM, but I'm not optimistic.

Benjamin Netanyahu is a very skilled politician who has time and time again shown that he will do anything to stay in power and out of jail, even at the cost of Israel as a nation and as a society.

………

The longtime prime minister, facing corruption charges as well as scrutiny over the security failures that led to 7 October, is widely believed to see staying in office as his best chance of escaping prosecution. He also needs to parry an internal challenge from the two ultra-Orthodox parties in his coalition over the issue of military conscription.