Top Likud minister said to support ousting Netanyahu in talk with hostage relatives
Unnamed ‘very senior’ politician reportedly decries rightward shift of party and coalition, agrees that PM is good at lying, and argues for exit of entire top defense brass
A senior Likud minister reportedly said they would support the ouster of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pilloried his coalition allies from the extreme right during a recent meeting with families of hostages.
The minister cited in the Channel 12 news report Sunday was not named, but was described by the network as someone “very senior” and their criticism was touted as unprecedented given their closeness to the halls of powers, underlining the premier’s potentially precarious political position as he navigates a profusion of internal and external challenges.
Hostage families have held regular meetings with political leaders and have in recent days sought to ramp up pressure on the government to reach a deal with the Hamas terror group to free the 101 captives held in Gaza following the clinching of a ceasefire with Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border.
During one such meeting in recent days, the minister agreed with a series of accusations against the government voiced by a relative of an abductee taken during the Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, including calling for the ouster of Netanyahu and other leaders.
“This is a wide coalition and the ministers think the opposite of what you think. The ministers think we need to return and settle [the Gaza Strip],” the minister was quoted saying.
According to the report, which did not give a date for the meeting, the minister responded in agreement when the relative bemoaned that the ultra-nationalism of late Jewish extremist Meir Kahane had infiltrated the Likud party and claimed that Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli, a Likud member, had adopted the hardline views of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
Chikli, a former lawmaker for the now-defunct Yamina party, joined Likud in 2022 run after helping bring down the previous Yamina-led coalition, paving the way for Netanyahu’s return to power. His placement on the Likud slate was widely seen as a kickback for helping trigger new elections, making him something of an insider in the party.
The lawmaker’s far-right views often dovetail with those Ben Gvir, a hardliner who heads the extremist Otzma Yehudit party and who has threatened to attempt to bring down the government rather than see a hostage deal or ceasefire in Gaza.
The unnamed minister also agreed when the relative argued that the government could have agreed to a ceasefire and hostage deal and then continued fighting, since “the prime minister knows well how to lie.”
When asked about friction between Netanyahu and the Shin Bet security service, the minister reportedly answered that they “would have sent the head of the Shin Bet [Ronen Bar] packing a long time ago. Him, [IDF Chief of Staff] Herzi [Halevi], [Mossad chief] David Barnea, and everybody.”
Asked about Netanyahu, the minister is said to have answered: “Netanyahu as well.”
The report did not cite a source for the information. The Hostage and Missing Families Forum, which represents families and often arranges such meetings, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The report was published as Netanyahu convened a security discussion on the issue of a possible hostage deal.
Talks on the matter have begun to ramp back up since a deal in Lebanon was clinched last week, with leading mediator Egypt hosting representatives from Hamas who arrived in Cairo on Saturday for talks with its negotiators.
Still, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Sunday that there had been “nothing new” to advance a potential deal.
“I haven’t seen any change, not even in Hamas terminology,” said the official.
Netanyahu said on Thursday that he was “ready for a ceasefire” in the war in Gaza “when we think we can achieve the release of the hostages,” but would not end the war against Hamas — a core demand by the terror group — until it was destroyed as both a military and governing entity.
The reported criticism from the senior minister comes at a particularly politically perilous period for Netanyahu, who is dealing with increased domestic and international pressure to wrap up the war in Gaza with a deal to free hostages kidnapped on October 7, 2023, and several others held there for longer; continued uneasiness over the truce with Hezbollah in Lebanon; swiftly approaching high-stakes testimony he is supposed to deliver in the three graft cases he is on trial for, and coalition partners putting the squeeze on him to extract pet concessions on highly charged issues, such as military draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men.
On Friday, Halevi indicated that he would step down once the military completes its investigations into Hamas’s October 7 onslaught.
“At the end of the investigations, we will also make personal decisions and commanders will exercise responsibility, from me down. I have no intention of passing over personal decisions when the picture becomes clearer to us,” he wrote in a missive to troops.
The political leadership has consistently opposed any official investigation that could lay blame at their door, saying there will be time to do so after the war, and some have accused Netanyahu of dragging his feet on a deal to stave off attempts to cast responsibility on his government or punish them at the polls.
Recent polls have shown Likud remaining as the largest party if elections were held now, though it and its likely coalition partners would fall far short of the 61 seats needed for a coalition.
While polling so far out from elections is generally considered unreliable, the numbers can be useful in sketching a general idea of where the Israeli electorate stands.
Emanuel Fabian, Lazar Berman and Jessica Steinberg contributed to this report.
