Far-right pressure on PM grows as MKs threaten elections if no ‘decisive’ Gaza victory

Several far-right lawmakers threatened on Sunday to bolt Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, a day after Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said he’d “lost faith” in the premier’s war strategy.

Zvi Sukkot of Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party and Yitzhak Kroizer of Otzma Yehudit both said on Sunday that they were worried that the plan to conquer Gaza City, approved by the security cabinet last week, is a ploy to pressure Hamas back to the negotiating table, resulting in a partial ceasefire and hostage release deal rather than a “decisive” victory over the terror group.

They were joined by Religious Zionism MK Simcha Rothman, who said that the cabinet’s decision had brought the nationalist party closer to leaving the government.

Sukkot told Ynet that his party would meet in the coming days to decide on its path forward. The departure of any lawmaker from the coalition would leave Netanyahu with a minority in the Knesset.

“If we return to October 6, 2023, and decide to abandon the war’s objectives, it is an existential danger to the State of Israel,” Sukkot posted on X on Sunday, referring to the day before the Hamas-led invasion of Israel that launched the war, when the terror group controlled Gaza. “If this is the situation, in my humble opinion, we need to go to elections.”

Members of the two parties have consistently advocated for Israel to occupy and annex Gaza, for the Gazan population to be pressed to depart, and for Israeli settlements to be rebuilt in the enclave.

Kroizer echoed Sukkot’s comments in a radio interview.

“If we see that this plan isn’t…. where we’re going for a decisive victory over the terror groups in the Gaza Strip, and again we come to a round and a maneuver that ends in a partial deal, [leaving the government] is something we’ll definitely consider,” Kroizer said. “We might get to a point where we need to return the mandate to the citizens of the State of Israel” — meaning, new elections.

Rothman sounded a similar note in an interview with the Knesset Channel.

Asked why party leader Smotrich has not already quit if he had no faith in Netanyahu, Rothman replied that “it’s definitely on the table. It’s something that’s been said many times… that the moment we are convinced that they have dropped the goals of the war… we will no longer be a part of the government.”

Last week’s cabinet meeting brought Religious Zionism very close to such an eventuality, Rothman added, although nothing is certain yet.

“I suppose the coming hours and days will tell,” he said, demanding that the cabinet cancel its decision and “go all the way to the end to defeat Hamas.”

Initially, Netanyahu faced heavy blowback over the Gaza City plan from the opposition, with lawmakers warning it would endanger Israeli hostages and soldiers and sink the army into a quagmire. The plan has also faced widespread opposition internationally from leaders who say Israel must not occupy Gaza, that the war must end, and the dire humanitarian conditions in the Strip must be addressed.

But the threats from within his government indicate that his partners on the right are also skeptical that the push into Gaza City will serve their goals.

On Saturday night, Smotrich posted a video on X saying that in light of the Gaza City plan, he has “lost faith that the prime minister is able and wants to lead the IDF to a decisive victory.”

Smotrich said he had “worked intensively” with Netanyahu in recent weeks to formulate a new plan for “victory in Gaza,” which would consist of a combination of military and political actions intended to destroy Hamas’s military and civil capabilities and force it to free the hostages. But Smotrich said the premier “made a U-turn” and “succumbed to weakness, let emotion win over reason and decided to do more of the same again,” launching a military maneuver aimed not at complete victory, but only at pressuring Hamas to agree to a “partial hostage deal.”

According to Kan news, Smotrich also threatened to bring down the government and force a new election during Thursday’s cabinet meeting.

“We will meet in the coming days and make a decision as a faction,” Sukkot told Ynet regarding the threat to leave. He added that “this is a good government,” but said if the country returns to a pre-October 7 reality, “I won’t be able to sleep at night. We’ll need to go to elections.”

Seizing on the internal turmoil, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid called on Smotrich on Sunday to help advance a bill to dissolve the Knesset and hold new elections.

“In your own words, you admitted that the prime minister’s policy is not leading to a decisive outcome in Gaza, is not returning our hostages, and is not winning the war,” Lapid said in a statement. “You also added that you can no longer stand behind the prime minister and back him up.”

The Knesset is currently in recess. In June, the opposition held a vote on dissolution of the parliament amid a fight over military enlistment between Netanyahu and his Haredi coalition partners, but that bill failed to advance, with Haredi leaders reportedly balking in part because they learned Israel was about to attack Iran’s nuclear program.

Knesset rules dictate that the bill cannot come to the floor again for six months. But in July, Lapid announced that he had begun the process of collecting 61 signatures in order to submit a so-called “change of circumstances” letter to Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, requesting permission to hold a new vote on dissolving the Knesset.

According to the Knesset bylaws, a defeated bill can be submitted again for reconsideration before six months have passed if circumstances have changed significantly. Such a change can be shown by collecting 61 lawmakers’ signatures, constituting a majority of the body.