What comes after Gantz’s resignation?
There are now two different visions in Israeli politics for how the war should progress. Netanyahu would have the war continue without end, while Gantz would accept a ceasefire but find a pretext to resume the fighting once the captives are released.
Eight months into Israel’s genocidal war on the people of Gaza, Israel’s war cabinet is beginning to break up. The resignation of opposition leader Benny Gantz from the cabinet last Sunday came after weeks of anticipation.
Gantz announced his resignation after he had given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an ultimatum to put forward a postwar plan in mid-May. In a televised statement, he accused Netanyahu of preventing Israel from winning “real victory” in the war on Gaza by obstructing important decisions for his own political gain.
Gantz voiced his support for the U.S. ceasefire and prisoners’ exchange proposal and called for early Israeli elections. He also called upon other politicians to withdraw from the cabinet.
One of the other members who also quit the cabinet was Gadi Eisenkot, another centrist figure from the Israeli military establishment who authored the infamous Dahiya Doctrineafter the 2006 Lebanon war. Eisenkot and Gantz’s presence in the war cabinet since the beginning of the war was intended to reflect national unity in service of the war effort. That unity now seems to be unraveling.
The biggest impact of Gantz’s resignation is that there are now two different visions within Israeli politics of how the war should end. The first would have the war continue indefinitely, with the unachievable goal of “destroying Hamas” and refusing any halt, even if temporary, to the fighting. This is represented by Netanyahu, with the enthusiastic and shrill backing of hardline ministers like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who threaten to withdraw from and collapse the rightwing coalition government if the war ends.
The second, represented by the cabinet resignees, would prioritize a captives’ exchange deal that inevitably leads to an end in the fighting, but which crucially may resume halfway through the agreement by finding a pretext to sabotage it.
Political disunity and the course of the war
The unity government that came together at the start of the war began to fracture as the months passed without achieving the war’s stated goals. Internal political tensions reached a boiling point as the cost of the war and the casualties increased, including announcements that Israeli captives had been killed by the Israeli army. The discontent manifested in the streets of Tel Aviv as the number of protesters demanding Netanyahu’s resignation and a prisoner exchange deal grew exponentially.
Israel’s failures throughout the war are reflected on the ground in Gaza and on the international stage.
In Gaza, Israel has exhausted all its military choices without achieving any of its goals. Hamas, as a governing body in Gaza, has not only survived so far but is filling the void left by the withdrawal of Israeli troops. Its military wing, alongside a number of other Palestinian guerrilla groups, continues to fight across the strip, inflicting losses on Israeli forces daily.
Internationally, Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). At the International Criminal Court (ICC), there are applications for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his war minister, Yoav Gallant. Israel has suffered a number of diplomatic crises with several Latin American and African countries, while European several states have recognized the state of Palestine.
Most importantly, Israel has failed to drag the international community into shutting down UNRWA or accepting the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.
But the biggest failure of all is Gazans’ repeated demonstration that their social cohesion and their resolve to restart life amid the rubble hasn’t been broken.
These conditions and the lack of a clear plan under Netanyahu’s leadership have increased Israeli demands for an exchange deal.
An ideological rift
“Until this moment, the majority of Israelis continue to support continuing the war,” Razi Nabulse, a political analyst and researcher at the Institute for Palestine Studies, told Mondoweiss. “However, the percentage of those in favor of a prisoners’ exchange deal, even if it means ending the war, is growing exponentially, reaching 47% according to Israeli polls,” he indicated.
“The division among Israelis around a ceasefire deal is also an ideological one. On the right, they think that since more soldiers have been killed than there are captives, it makes no sense to stop the war without achieving its goals only to release the captives through a deal,” Nabulse continued. “On the more liberal center, they think that it makes no sense to continue to sacrifice soldiers and potentially kill more captives when they can be released through a deal and that the individuals’ lives are more important than the war objectives, which are clearly not being achieved.”
“Gantz’s resignation will surely increase this division and increase the pressure on Netanyahu, both to accept the deal proposed by the U.S. and to go to elections. But at the same time, it will leave the direction of the war under the influence of Netanyahu’s far-right allies,” he explained.
“It is unlikely that Gantz’s resignation will bring about the downfall of Netanyahu,” Nabulse pointed out. “Simply because all members of the right-wing government coalition, with a 64-seat majority in the Knesset, understand that the right is too weak now because of the war and its unfolding results. It is not in their interest to go to elections now.”
“However, it is also unlikely that Netanyahu will bring his far-right allies like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich to the war cabinet,” Nabulse added. “Rather, he will dissolve the war cabinet and direct the war from the regular government, where he has a majority of allies. In short, the war direction will be more homogenous, but with greater pressure from the opposition.”
Regional priorities and the U.S. elections
This reordering of internal Israeli political cards also comes in a larger international context, where the U.S. is engaged in pushing for reaching a prisoners’ exchange and ceasefire deal. On Sunday, the U.S. pushed for the adoption of a proposed ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council, which passed with a majority of votes. This marks a clear shift in the U.S. position from the early months of the war when the U.S. vetoed ceasefire resolutions three times in a row.
As the war continues, the U.S. presidential race is approaching the finish line amid a serious disenchantment among the democratic voting base with the Biden administration’s full support of Israel’s genocide.
Achieving a deal could mean creating a chance for advancing normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which has been on hold since October 7. It could also mean that the pro-U.S. regional economic integration project meant to counter Iran, Russia, and China can be resumed.
“On the one hand, the dispute between Netanyahu and Biden increases Netanyahu’s popularity,” Nabulse said. “And as U.S. elections approach, time plays in Netanyahu’s favor, who wants to turn the support of Israel’s war on Palestinians into a central issue of debate at the elections.”
“I have no doubt that Gantz’s resignation was agreed upon with the Americans in order to put pressure on Netanyahu,” he remarked. “If not by encouraging other members of his cabinet to resign and bring an end to his government, then at least to accept the ceasefire deal, which he could very possibly accept and then try to sabotage later on and resume the war.”
What this essentially means is that the diverging opinions within the Israeli political establishment over the continuation of the war are not as divergent as the vitriolic rhetoric may suggest. Both Netanyahu and Gantz agree that the war effort should continue in one form or another; the disagreement is over the place of the Israeli captives within it. Gantz would prefer to reach a ceasefire agreement that he could then find a reason to go back on or sabotage once a large portion of the captives have been released, while Netanyahu cannot entertain even such a temporary pause, as it would threaten the breakup of his coalition and open the door for accountability for the failures of October 7.
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