‘The war cabinet is not wallpaper’: April call between PM, Gantz shows rift on hostage deal

An Israeli TV network aired details Sunday of a previously unheard April phone call between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-war cabinet minister Benny Gantz, shining new light both on the deterioration of the emergency war government and on failed efforts to reach a hostage deal at the time.

Channel 12 said the call was held on April 27, some six weeks before Gantz quit the war coalition. It followed a decision by Netanyahu to limit the mandate of the Israeli negotiating team that was holding talks with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, without consulting Gantz. As part of the coalition deal, Gantz was a member of the now-defunct war cabinet along with Netanyahu and then-defense minister Yoav Gallant, and had been involved in all previous decisions regarding the team’s mandate.

The decision to shrink the team’s mandate was made against the backdrop of intensive negotiations for the release of the hostages held captive by Hamas in Gaza. The negotiations ultimately fell apart, with both sides unable to bridge the gap on fundamental issues.

Several other people were on the call, the network said, including Gallant and Mossad chief David Barnea.

Gantz, according to the transcript cited by Channel 12, expressed anger over the change to the team’s mandate without his input, and suspicion that the decision had been made as a result of pressure from Netanyahu’s far-right coalition allies, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who had on various occasions threatened to quit the government should Israel halt its war in Gaza.

Netanyahu, in response, sought to dismiss Gantz’s misgivings, explaining that the conversation on the team’s mandate had taken place without clear planning.

“Benny, I want to set the record straight,” he began, according to the transcript. “I had just wanted to speak to the head of Mossad and [negotiator] Nitzan Alon to make some comments on the text [of the deal] to confirm it with them. But then others wanted to join the conversation. The defense minister wanted to join and the IDF chief of staff wanted to join.

“I had nothing against you joining, you should have done, there’s no question,” Netanyahu continued. “We’re not hiding anything. I’d have had no problem with it, and I’m sure you would have agreed with everything in that conversation.”

Asked by Gantz what he had sought to review, Netanyahu said he’d “wanted to fix some things, such as how we can motivate Hamas to give us hostages without committing upfront to the IDF leaving the Strip.”

The premier also denied having leaked details of the proposed deal to Smotrich, telling Gantz that he “got it from someone else, not me.”

“You think he came to me to talk and then I gave him the details, and that’s not true,” Netanyahu insisted to Gantz. “I didn’t give him any details. I was there with [Cabinet Secretary Yossi] Fuchs, and it was a five-minute meeting. He came to talk to me about something else, we didn’t say a word about the deal.”

A portion of the call was barred for publication by the military censor, as Mossad Chief David Barnea, who was also on the call, recounted to Gantz the details of the decisions made the previous night. Channel 12 stated, however, that the meeting had partially focused on a decision to demand that Hamas release 33 hostages on humanitarian grounds during the first stage of any deal, should one be reached.

“So we requested to have a quick meeting to discuss the matter, and then all the people who joined, joined,” the news outlet quoted Netanyahu as telling Gantz. “We agreed that this would be the starting number, everyone agreed… I’m sure that if you had been on the line, you would have agreed as well, because everyone did.”

Gantz, in response, warned the premier that the war cabinet was not “wallpaper,” to be ignored in the background.

“I told you during the discussion that I insist on having clear understandings, because every time we’ve had an agreement — and please check yourself, prime minister — throughout all the previous discussions, we reached an agreement, left the room, and by the next day, the matter was postponed or shifted elsewhere, each time under a different pretext, justified as it may be,” Gantz said. “Ultimately, every decision we’ve made in the war cabinet has become the basis for changes or delays, and I cannot accept that.

“You’re the prime minister, you hold the ultimate responsibility,” Gantz told Netanyahu, and said that “we both know that 16 people have been murdered since December.”

“Every moment that goes by — we don’t know how significant it is. Every day, every delay can cost human life. We delay and delay, and I’m sure you don’t want that and I don’t want that, but at the end of the day, it endangers the hostages,” he continued.

“I’ll say it again — if the war cabinet is, in your view, an unnecessary burden, then disband it and say so. If not, then respect it, and if a decision is made there, it cannot be that by the next morning I receive reports that things have changed.”

He charged that it seemed to him that Netanyahu’s “half-hour with Smotrich was more meaningful than the war cabinet [meeting].”

Gantz also expressed concern that with Israel’s demands in the talks, Hamas would not even agree to come to the negotiating table.

Netanyahu countered that Hamas was receiving “very favorable opening conditions” and had no reason not to participate.

“We need to get the best opening conditions that we can,” Gantz agreed, “provided that the professionals, and you as well, can confirm that Hamas will indeed come to the table, because if they don’t, this will drag on for another week. And in that week, I don’t know how many more hostages we might lose. If we don’t trust the [negotiating] team, let’s send someone else. You go — I have no problem with that.”

The conversation then returned to the matter of Smotrich and Ben Gvir, Channel 12 reported, as Gallant, who had been silently listening to the call, suggested that whoever had leaked them the outlines of the proposal on the table “doesn’t want a deal.”

Returning the hostages “is also one of the war’s objectives, and if they aren’t alive we won’t achieve it,” Gallant said.

Gallant, who was fired by Netanyahu as defense minister earlier this month, suggested that the war should be steered only by the war cabinet, and not members of the wider security cabinet.

“It’s under the [war] cabinet’s authority to manage the war,” he said. “The prime minister is the most important person here, but he’s not alone.”

“I know there are people who don’t want deals,” Gantz said in response to Gallant’s pondering. “I know that some people are benefiting from the ongoing adversity, and I’m not willing to be part of it.”

The report noted that while Hamas initially responded positively to the offer on the table, which would have included several stages of hostage releases and a gradual withdrawal of IDF forces from the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu then swiftly declared to the media that Israel would be able to resume fighting after the first stage, thus avoiding an end to the war. Critics accused the premier of undermining the negotiations with such statements, as well as by his later insistence to add demands such as Israel maintaining control over the Gaza-Egypt border under any deal.

Gantz and his National Unity party would eventually quit the coalition in June due to what he said was a lack of clear direction in the handling of the war, and he would accuse the prime minister of being beholden to the far right, which has sought to continue the war and even hopes to rebuild settlements in Gaza.

The Prime Minister’s Office dismissed the Channel 12 report, claiming that “Once again, certain elements in Israel are echoing Hamas’s propaganda, aimed at placing the blame on the prime minister, even as a number of American officials have made it crystal clear that Hamas was the reason there was no further hostage deal” after 105 hostages were freed during a weeklong truce in November 2023.

Meanwhile, Gallant’s office said it would not comment on the leaked contents of a classified security discussion, as it “harms the achievement of the war’s goals.”

“We suggest that opposition elements stop such leaks,” the statement added.

For his part, Gantz responded to the report by condemning the continued leaking of sensitive conversations and called again to form a state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the October 7 Hamas terror onslaught and subsequent war in Gaza.

A state commission of inquiry, Gantz said, was the only way “to bring the truth to the public about the decision-making process and to provide answers: who pushed for the release of hostages and offensive operations, and who hesitated, was afraid, and acted according to the whims and approvals of his coalition partners.”