analysis

Hamas hostage deal could topple Netanyahu’s government

If right-wing discontent over the terms spreads, the prime minister's seat may depend on forging alliances with his most adamant rivals.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands with Opposition Leader Yair Lapid at a plenum session for Israeli Knesset's 75th birthday, in the assembly hall of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, Israel on Jan, 24, 2024. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands with Opposition Leader Yair Lapid at a plenum session for Israeli Knesset's 75th birthday, in the assembly hall of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, Israel on Jan, 24, 2024. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.
Canaan Lidor. Credit: Courtesy.
Canaan Lidor
Canaan Lidor is an award-winning journalist and news correspondent at JNS. A former fighter and counterintelligence analyst in the IDF, he has over a decade of field experience covering world events, including several conflicts and terrorist attacks, as a Europe correspondent based in the Netherlands. Canaan now lives in his native Haifa, Israel, with his wife and two children.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will likely get his cabinet to approve the terms of the emerging, controversial ceasefire deal with Hamas. Doing so may, however, come with a heavy political price.

Due to opposition on the right to some of the terms of the deal revealed Tuesday, pushing it through could cost Netanyahu his coalition, which would then require him to perform an awkward mid-war reshuffle—or declare early elections.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of the hard-right Otzma Yehudit Party has emerged as the deal’s most outspoken opponent within the government.

On X, Ben-Gvir called the deal “horrific,” noting it would entail the release of hundreds of terrorists and withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from key areas of Gaza, effectively undoing the achievements of the war so far. Crucially, he implied that he would pull out of the government and coalition if the deal is approved.

If that happens, Netanyahu’s coalition would lose two of its Knesset seats to the opposition but still retain a majority of 62 out of 120 seats.

Ben-Gvir, however, went a step further, calling on Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionism Party to join him in threatening to pull out of the coalition if the deal goes through, potentially toppling Netanyahu’s government.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visits a prison in central Israel where high-risk Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists captured in recent war are being held, Jan. 8, 2025. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90.

“The power of Otzma Yehudit is not enough in the current composition of the government to serve as leverage to prevent the deal, and our resignation alone will not stop its implementation,” said Ben-Gvir.

If Religious Zionism, too, were to exit, adding its seven seats to Ben-Gvir’s six, Netanyahu’s coalition would lose its majority. If the two right-wing parties withhold their support on crucial votes, it would topple the government and trigger an early election sometime this year.

Recent polls suggest a crash for Likud and other right-wing parties if elections were held now, with the opposition receiving 61 seats, excluding another 10 seats that would go to Arab parties.

To avoid this scenario, Netanyahu would need to bring into the coalition another six lawmakers at least.

The likeliest candidates are Benny Gantz, head of the centrist National Union Party, or Avigdor Liberman of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu Party. But both men have a long history with Netanyahu. Gantz left the coalition in June, bitterly accusing Netanyahu of “preventing real victory” in Gaza and Lebanon.

And Liberman has vowed in July to never join a government headed by Netanyahu, whom he had accused of using “methods like Stalin and Goebels” and called “scum of the human species.” Opposition Leader Yair Lapid has also vowed not to join a government headed by Netanyahu.

Otzma Yehudit Party chairman Itamar Ben-Gvir (left) and Religious Zionism Party leader Bezalel Smotrich at a campaign event in Sderot, Oct. 26, 2022. Credit: Flash90.

Smotrich has criticized the emerging deal as “catastrophic” and vowed that his party “will not be a part of a surrender deal that abandons many hostages.” But he has not threatened to leave the government if the deal is approved.

Ben-Gvir’s call on Smotrich to prevent the deal places considerable pressure on the finance minister.

Religious Zionism ran together with Otzma Yehudit in the 2022 general elections but separated into two factions. They compete for a similar demographic and represent different streams within the broader religious-Zionist movement. Ben-Gvir has often demonstrated a more uncompromising attitude relative to Smotrich’s more pragmatic approach.

But when it comes to the polarizing and emotional issue of the deal with Hamas, many of those who voted for the parties may side with Ben-Gvir.

Ditza Or, the mother of Israeli hostage Avinatan Or, on Monday evening moved and angered many Israelis in an interview she gave to Israel’s Channel 13, in which she argued against the deal.

“A leader that carries out a selection of his own people, that’s not a leader. That’s a Judenrat,” she said, referencing the Jewish committees that the Nazis set up in ghettos during World War II to facilitate the annihilation process of their own people.

“It’s a submissive, panicked Judenrat that tries to appease the American overlord, among others, at the expense of our children’s blood,” said Ditza Or, who has so far largely refrained from appearing in the media. “Anyone who represents us in the Knesset, the coalition, the cabinet, the government, and raises their hand in favor of this reckless deal of abandonment and desertion, they have betrayed our vote. We will not give them our vote again, it will be their last time voting in our name. We will have new leaders.”

The Tikva Forum for Families of Hostages, to which the Or family belongs, has vocally opposed the terms of the draft deal. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a different group of relatives, also wrote that it seeks a deal that would ensure the return of all the hostages. But that statement stopped short of calling on the government to reject a partial deal.

Under the draft agreement, men like Avinatan Or would likely not be among the first ones released.

The proposed three-phase deal, whose terms the Associated Press said Hamas accepted on Tuesday, would begin with the gradual release of 33 hostages—including women, children, elderly individuals and wounded civilians—over a 42-day period, in exchange for potentially hundreds of Palestinian women and children detained by Israel.

The 33 hostages would include five female Israeli soldiers, each exchanged for 50 Palestinian prisoners, including 30 serving life sentences for security offenses.

During this initial phase, Israeli forces would withdraw from Gaza population centers, displaced Palestinians would begin returning to their homes in northern Gaza and humanitarian aid to the Strip would significantly increase, with approximately 600 trucks entering the region daily.

During later stages, more hostages would be released and Israeli troops would pull out of the Philadelphia Corridor, the border between Egypt and Gaza, which Netanyahu has vowed not to leave.

Legally, Netanyahu has the authority to approve the deal himself but, in keeping with political precedent, it is widely assumed that he would bring it to the Ministerial Committee on National Security Affairs, also known as the State Security Cabinet, for approval, and then to the full government cabinet as a whole. Both forums are expected to pass the deal regardless of any objections by Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism.

In the second and third phases of the ceasefire, Hamas and Israel would negotiate a more permanent arrangement to end the hostilities that began on Oct. 7, 2023. On that day, thousands of Hamas terrorists and Gaza civilians invaded Israel, murdering about 1,200 people and abducting another 251. Of those hostages, 117 have returned alive, while 40 bodies have been recovered.

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