Netanyahu confidant Dermer plans to retire from politics before next election – report

Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer plans to retire from political life before the next election, a Hebrew media report said Monday.

Dermer has been discussing his retirement since Israel’s 12-day war in June that targeted Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missiles program, the Israel Hayom daily reported, citing unnamed senior government officials.

The top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not settled on an exact date to leave his position, but will do so before the elections, which are scheduled for October 2026, but are likely to be held earlier, the sources said.

Dermer was Israel’s ambassador to the US from 2013 to 2021 and was a key negotiator for the Abraham Accords, which saw the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco normalize relations with Israel in 2020.

Since February, Dermer has led the negotiating team for a hostage release-ceasefire deal with Hamas, replacing Mossad chief David Barnea and then-Shin Bet head Ronen Bar after the premier reportedly sought to change tack.

No hostages have been released through negotiations under Dermer, and hostage families have accused the minister of offering no plan forward.

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 50 hostages, including 49 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 28 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.

Hamas released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire between January and March, and one additional hostage, a dual American-Israeli citizen, in May as a “gesture” to the United States. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war. In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners, and Gazan terror suspects detained during the war.

Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 49 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, as well as the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.