Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the leader of the National Unity opposition party Benny Gantz announced today their agreement to form an emergency government to prosecute the war against Hamas. According to Israeli press accounts, Gantz and fellow party members Gadi Eisenkot, Gideon Sa’ar, and two others will be sworn in as ministers for the duration of the war.
Gantz, who has served both as Defense Minister and chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, had offered to join a unity government, on the condition that a narrow war cabinet be formed to manage the war and where his party will have real influence. He appears to have gotten his way on that account.
Yesh Atid party leader, Yair Lapid, is not part of the emergency government but a space has been left open for him should he decide to join. According to the Times of Israel, however, no talks are ongoing to bring this opposition figure in. Lapid had made his entry into any unity government with Netanyahu that both Netanyahu’s judicial reform legislation and the ministers representing the ultra-Orthodox messianic crazy parties in Netanyahu’s governing coalition be thrown out. Both conditions have been rejected by Netanyahu.
Lapid is not the only one in Israel demanding change from this government’s Palestinian extermination policy, even as this horrible war proceeds. Today the Editorial Board of Ha’aretz daily, one of the country’s lead newspapers of record, demanded Israel negotiate a prisoners-for-hostages exchange “now!”
The lead editorial excoriates the government for refusing to negotiate freedom for the hostages being held by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Israeli governments have done such swaps before, even for dead bodies; the country needs “An Israel-Hamas Prisoner Exchange Now.”
“The government seems to have decided to apply the so-called Hannibal Protocol, which allows risking abductees’ lives, to the 150 captive and missing Israelis. In an interview with CNN, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan said that concern for the hostages’ situation is `not going to stop us, prevent us from doing what we need to do in order to secure the future of Israel.’ Yossi Shelley, director general of the Prime Minister’s Office, similarly said that ‘the hostages are a fact. And the attacks are a fact. That’s the decision.’ And Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich advocated at the cabinet meeting for Israel to `strike Hamas brutally, and not take the issue of the captives into account too much,’” the editors wrote.
“Sources in the region, including in Hamas, have said the organization is willing to negotiate over a swap of Israeli women and children in exchange for Palestinian women and children imprisoned in Israel.” Forget saving Israel’s national honor; save the hostages. “We must pay whatever is demanded, with no delays, no fancy maneuvering and no tricks.”
