Otzma Yehudit won’t topple Netanyahu, MK says after party’s threat to bolt over Gaza

Despite the threat by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to take his ultranationalist party out of the coalition unless Israel renews military operations against Hamas, Otzma Yehudit MK Yitzhak Kroizer says the faction is not actively looking to topple the government.

The comments from the freshman lawmaker would appear to largely defang the potency of Ben Gvir’s attempts to leverage his party’s position in the coalition to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resume fighting in Gaza, indicating that it is only willing to mutiny so far as its actions don’t risk the viability of the government remaining in power.

“We never work toward bringing down the government,” Kroizer told The Times of Israel during an interview in his Knesset office last week. “This government is a right-wing government. We worked hard for it to be established… the role of Otzma Yehudit is to uphold the values of the right for which we were elected.”

Ben Gvir told Channel 12 news late last month that he had given Netanyahu an unspecified deadline to both dismantle the terrorist organization and enact the death penalty for terror convicts, warning that if his conditions were not met, his far-right party would quit the government. He earlier threatened to bolt the government if Hamas “continues to exist” once the hostages were freed.

Two days after the Channel 12 interview, Ben Gvir told reporters that if the prime minister did not ensure the advancement of the death penalty bill within a matter of weeks, his party would no longer consider itself obligated to vote with the coalition.

The controversial measure is currently advancing through the Knesset with Netanyahu’s support.

The Otzma Yehudit lawmaker’s comments, while not issued in any official capacity as a spokesman for the party, represent some of the clearest and most detailed explanations of its agenda since Ben Gvir issued his ultimatum to Netanyahu.

Asked about Ben Gvir’s demand to destroy Hamas, Kroizer replied that the government itself “defined the goals of the war: dismantling the military and political capabilities of the Hamas terror organization and returning the hostages.” As long as they have not been accomplished, he said, it was Otzma Yehudit’s duty “to push the government to implement its own declarations.”

Like Ben Gvir, Kroizer refused to back up the ultimatum with a deadline, but insisted it had teeth.

“The gun is on the table,” he said. “These are not empty promises. The prime minister knows that sooner or later, if he does not return to destroying the terror organizations, the coalition will be in danger.”

It’s unclear to what extent that is true, however.

Otzma Yehudit’s departure from the coalition would not automatically bring down Netanyahu’s minority government, which currently holds 60 out of 120 seats in the Knesset. It would, however, leave Netanyahu with only 54 seats, curtailing even further its already limited ability to advance its legislative agenda.

Two other parties have already made similar moves, abandoning the government but continuing to lend the coalition support from the outside. Both United Torah Judaism and Shas left the government in July to protest increased enforcement against ultra-Orthodox military draft dodgers as well as the coalition’s failure to pass legislation regulating draft exemptions for yeshiva students; Shas has nonetheless remained a part of the coalition, and UTJ also lends it some measure of backing to stay afloat.

While it’s unclear what model Otzma Yehudit could follow if it made good on its threat, Kroizer said that even if it leaves the coalition, the party will not line up with the opposition to bring down Netanyahu and call new elections, responding with a definitive “no” when asked about such a scenario.

Ben Gvir’s “goal is not to topple [Netanyahu]. The goal is for him to fulfill what he also promised the public who elected him, the right-wing public that is the majority in the State of Israel.”

Earlier this year, Ben Gvir’s party quit the coalition for several months to protest the acceptance of a previous partial ceasefire-hostage deal, only returning once combat operations in Gaza resumed. As now, the departure had little effect on coalition stability.

In order to bring down the government, Otzma Yehudit would need to join the opposition in holding a full constructive vote of no confidence, but that would require 61 Knesset members to agree on backing an alternative government to replace the current one, an unlikely scenario.

The party could also join with the opposition in collecting 61 signatures to submit a “change of circumstances” letter to Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, requesting permission to hold a vote on dissolving the Knesset.

Sovereignty, settlement and emigration

According to Kroizer, Otzma Yehudit’s demands regarding Gaza go far beyond disarming Hamas and dismantling its ability to govern, steps endorsed in US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza.

Instead, the lawmaker said, the party’s demands consist of  “sovereignty, settlement, and encouraging emigration.”

Netanyahu has repeatedly denied that his government is aiming for or supports the resettlement of the Gaza Strip or the extension of Israeli sovereignty over the territory.

He flirted with the idea of encouraging the migration of its approximately 2 million Palestinian civilians after it was briefly endorsed by Trump, but the government has avoided publicly backing the idea since signing the Trump plan, which explicitly nixes the push for Palestinians to leave.

Kroizer, though, insisted it was an inevitability, calling for the “full and absolute occupation of the Gaza Strip” by “its original owners, which are the Jews.”

“As long as there are Arabs in Gaza, someone will try to kidnap our citizens,” Kroizer claimed, taking positions well outside the Israeli political mainstream. “If there were no Arabs in Gaza, no one would kidnap the residents of Be’eri, Nir Oz and Kfar Aza, etc. If there were no Arabs in Gaza, no one would launch rockets at Israeli citizens. Therefore, ultimately, we will have to reach this point.”

Kroizer denied that his plan constituted ethnic cleansing, as many have argued, insisting that Palestinians would want to leave once Israel annexed and settled Gaza. He claimed emigration could be encouraged “in a humane way.”

“We will assist them in reaching a third destination. The State of Israel will even buy their property from them,” he said.

Considered among the most extreme lawmakers on the right, Kroizer and other MKs on the right have been cited by critics claiming Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza, including in submissions to the International Court of Justice.

Kroizer said he still stood by his November 2023 statement that “the Gaza Strip must be flattened, and everyone has one sentence — death,” arguing that Gazan society as a whole was complicit in the atrocities of October 7, 2023.

“Hostages told us their worst abusers were Gaza civilians — women and children. No Gaza citizen provided Israel with information about a hostage,” he said. “This is evil — pure evil — and evil must be eradicated.”

However, he denied advocating the genocide of Gazans, saying he only meant that “anyone who participated in the massacre — who murdered, raped or burned Israeli civilians — must be eliminated.”

Kroizer’s attempt to qualify his assertion that “everyone has one sentence — death” appears at odds with the plain meaning of his initial statement and with his decision not to retract it.

“We’re dealing with evil. Just as the world didn’t pity Germany after WWII — Israel hunted Nazi war criminals like Eichmann and executed him — we too must eradicate such evil,” he said.