National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir on Sunday night wrote Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu following the resignation of Ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot from the government, demanding to take their place in the war cabinet.
Of course, no one expects Netanyahu to keep his war cabinet intact without Gantz and Eisenkot, because with the two of them gone, that buffer has outlived its purpose. The last thing Netanyahu needs right now is to amplify Ben Gvir’s and Smotrich’s voices by inviting them to a war cabinet where they would be the warlike right-wingers and he, Netanyahu, the defeatist leftist.
Ben Gvir Wrote:
With the outbreak of the war, as part of a necessary move to unite the ranks, the National Unity Party was added to the coalition. This step was taken with our full support out of a sense of state unity and national responsibility.
Alas, to this state unity move was added an ugly move, in the form of an ultimatum to establish a small cabinet, and to boycott parties in the coalition and senior ministers, including yours truly.
Out of the same sense of national responsibility, despite the difficult ideological differences with the dangerousness perceptions of Gantz and Eisenkot, we let it go.
That small cabinet, which until now has been the “Conceptzia Cabinet,” was leading Israel until now, while excluding and banning senior ministers in the government.
No more. Now, with the resignation of the conceptzia ministers, there is no longer an excuse for boycotting and excluding senior partners and ministers who warned in real time of the conceptzia that today everyone understands was wrong.
As a minister in the government, chairman of a party, and a senior partner in the coalition, I hereby demand to join this cabinet, to be a partner in determining Israel’s security policy in the current hard times. It’s time to make courageous decisions and reach a solution.
Netanyahu, with his key war cabinet members, Ron Dermer and Aryeh Deri, needed Gantz in a unity government, not because of his ideas – the man does not possess ideas that have not been written for him by his sponsors and team of writers. Gantz was useful because the Americans wanted to see him in the government, to use him as a funnel for the White House and State Dept. proposals.
As Yehuda Schlesinger put it on Monday morning in Israel Hayom, “It is difficult for the Americans to be against the State of Israel, it is easy for them to be against the Netanyahu government. It’s hard for them to be against Netanyahu when Gantz and Eisenkot are there.”
With Gantz gone, Netanyahu will operate as Netanyahu does: he will work with a small team that will include the remaining members of his war cabinet but without the fancy name that would create conflict with Ben Gvir. The in-crowd will include Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Ron Dermer, and Aryeh Deri, alongside the non-voting members from the security establishment.
In the end, let’s face it, it wasn’t so much Gantz and Eisenkot who wanted Ben Gvir and Smotrich away from the triggers. It was Bibi.
