Likud lawmakers demand Netanyahu hold faction meeting on truce deal – report
Voicing concern that proposed temporary ceasefire and hostage release agreement could harm ability to achieve Gaza war goals, party members reportedly call on PM to loop them in
Six Likud Knesset members and one minister from the party have reportedly demanded an urgent faction discussion on the outline for a hostage release and temporary ceasefire deal being negotiated in Cairo and the management of the ongoing war in Gaza, now in its seventh month.
The lawmakers sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday saying that a deal “may have a dramatic effect on meeting the stated goals of the war,” Channel 12 reported.
“The Israeli government, under your leadership, has set clear goals for the war, chief among them removing of any security threat from the Gaza Strip, eliminating Hamas’s military and governance capabilities in the Strip, and the return of all the hostages,” they wrote in the letter. “Our forces have achieved some of the objectives and dealt a serious blow to Hamas’s capabilities, but the work is far from over.”
The letter was signed by Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli and MKs Boaz Bismuth, Moshe Saada, Dan Illouz, Tally Gotliv, Ariel Kellner and Amit Halevi, according to the report.
The war in Gaza erupted with Hamas’s October 7 massacre, when some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages.
The deal currently under discussion in Cairo would provide for the release of some 40 of the remaining 129 Israeli captives in Gaza, in return for a temporary truce and the release of hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners, including some convicted of deadly attacks.
The three-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which begins Tuesday evening and marks the end of Ramadan, appears to have emerged as a target date for a temporary halt in fighting.
“In view of the possibility of a deal emerging, which does not include all of the hostages and allows the residents of northern Gaza to return to their homes… we see the importance of having a factional discussion that will allow us to understand the guiding principles for the outline and the next stages of the campaign,” the Likud MKs reportedly wrote.
Their letter came as Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners warned Monday that they could pull their support from the government over the military’s withdrawal from southern Gaza.
As some diplomats expressed cautious optimism that negotiations in Cairo would succeed in securing a prisoner swap and truce between Israel and Hamas, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich convened his far-right Religious Zionism party for “urgent” consultation on the state of the war.
Smotrich also penned an angry letter to Netanyahu, in which he accused the premier of caving to international pressure and circumventing the cabinet on key points such as the withdrawal from Khan Younis.
Smotrich’s political ally on the far right, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, was even more explicit, threatening on X that “if the prime minister decides to end the war without a substantial attack on Rafah to defeat Hamas, he will not have a mandate to continue as premier.”
Addressing the negotiations for truce deal, Hamas said early Tuesday that Israel’s most recent proposal did not meet any of the demands of Palestinian factions.
Various officials from the terror group, mostly anonymous, have blamed stalled talks on Israel’s refusal to agree to a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza, the unrestricted return of all Palestinians to the northern Strip and the lifting of a 17-year-old blockade to allow speedy reconstruction of the coastal enclave.
Israel has repeatedly rejected Hamas’s call for an end to the war as a condition for a hostage deal, calling it “delusional.”
It is believed that 129 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza — not all of them alive — after 105 civilians were released from Hamas captivity during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released prior to that.
Three hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 12 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military. The IDF has confirmed the deaths of 34 of those still held by Hamas, citing intelligence and findings obtained by troops operating in Gaza.
