Benny Gantz, member of Israel’s War Cabinet, after announcing his resignation during a press conference on June 9, 2024 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Credit: Amir Levy/Getty Images
Outside the War Cabinet. Outside the government. Benny Gantz is back where he was at the beginning of the war that Hamas launched on October 7: former defense minister, former chief of staff and main political adversary of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It cannot be said that he did not warn us. On May 18 he announced that if Netanyahu did not present a coherent plan to bring the hostages home and a governance plan for Gaza after the war (among other things), he would leave the War Cabinet by June 8. In the wake of Saturday’s rescue of four Israeli hostages, he delayed carrying out his threat by one day.
“Leaving the government is a complex and painful decision,” Gantz said at a news conference Sunday night in Israel. However, he asserted, “Netanyahu is preventing us from moving toward a real victory (in Gaza).”
And now that? The three most pressing areas of interest in which Gantz’s resignation may be felt—at least for Israelis, Palestinians in Gaza, and the outside world—are the Israeli government, the progress of the war with Hamas, and Gantz’s own political prospects. Gantz.
Perhaps the most important impact of Gantz’s resignation is what it will not have: it will not cause the government to collapse.
“Benny Gantz is in a bind,” former Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller told CNN on Sunday ahead of Gantz’s resignation. “He would like to continue in the Government, he provides a kind of moderating hand, but he does not have the potential right now to overthrow the Government.”
Netanyahu and his coalition partners still hold 64 of the 120 Knesset seats. So unless President Biden’s hostage deal — sorry, from Israel — comes to fruition and Netanyahu’s far-right ministers make good on their threats to leave the government, Netanyahu could safely remain in office until the election. scheduled for October 2026 (opinion polls suggest that if they were held now, Gantz would win).
It remains to be seen what a government without Gantz means for the Palestinians of Gaza. Gantz is no dove, and it is unlikely that his “moderating” hand has made Israel go softer on Hamas, or caused fewer civilian casualties.
However, both Gantz and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have no qualms about publicly disagreeing with Netanyahu, and could have called him out if the prime minister had blocked a potential hostage deal for personal political reasons. Without Gantz, that seems less likely, as does the likelihood of a hostage deal being reached any time soon.
