Ministers fume over lack of updates from PM
Officials say they are kept out the loop, receive word of truce’s extension in Gaza ‘from Hamas’
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Israeli ministers expressed outrage Wednesday night at not being updated on the extension of the Gaza truce by five days until some time after the new truce came into effect, at midnight Wednesday.
“The situation in which senior ministers in the government and millions of the country’s citizens are updated on the fate of the truce from Hamas press briefings is unreasonable,” one senior official told Walla News.
An unnamed minister told Ynet that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “didn’t speak to the cabinet throughout the day and we don’t know what’s going on. He’s disappeared.”
According to the reports, ministers were not updated on the extension of the truce in Gaza until after it had been broken by rocket-fire and Israel decided to respond. They received most of their information from the media.
Israeli officials did not confirm the truce’s extension in official statements, but indicated a new agreement was indeed in effect during the night.
The extension did not go off smoothly, however. Several rockets were fired at Israel shortly before and after midnight by unknown Gaza factions. In response the IDF struck several Gaza targets, leading to a few more rockets. Hamas denied firing any rockets and blamed Israel for breaching the truce agreement.
Despite the short round of renewed violence, there were no reports of casualties in either Israel or Gaza, and by 1 a.m. the fighting seemed to have subsided.
The Times of Israel Community.