National Unity leader slams Netanyahu’s politicking and hesitation, vows to back hostage deal proposal and do the right thing ‘at any political cost’; coalition still has majority

Accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of preventing Israel from achieving “true victory” in its war against Hamas, National Unity chairman Benny Gantz announced his party’s long-anticipated withdrawal from the government on Sunday evening, weeks after conditioning his continued support on the prime minister’s acceptance of an agreed-upon vision for the Gaza conflict by June 8.

“After October 7, just like hundreds of thousands of patriotic Israelis, my colleagues and I mobilized as well” and joined the coalition, “even though we knew it was a bad government,” said Gantz, one of three voting members of Netanyahu’s war cabinet.

The centrist National Unity party joined the emergency government days after October 7, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages into the Gaza Strip, sparking the ongoing war in the enclave.

“We did it because we knew it was a bad government. The people of Israel, the fighters, the commanders, the families of the murdered, the casualties and the hostages needed unity and support like they needed air to breathe,” Gantz explained.

However, Netanyahu’s talk of unity had hidden a reality in which “fateful strategic decisions are met with hesitation and procrastination due to [narrow] political considerations,” he alleged, intimating that the prime minister prioritizes appeasing his far-right coalition partners. Quitting the coalition was “a complex and agonizing decision,” said Gantz, but one that he had made “for the good of the State of Israel.”

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