Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners on Saturday rallied behind the premier after he voiced opposition to the composition of President Donald Trump’s Gaza Executive Board.
“The countries that resuscitated Hamas cannot be the ones that replace it. Those that support it and continue to host it even now will not be given a foothold in Gaza. Period,” tweeted Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, referring to the inclusion of Qatar and Turkey.
“Our brave fighters did not risk their lives in a tremendous national mobilization just to swap one problem for another,” Smotrich wrote. “The prime minister must insist on this, even if it requires managing a dispute with our great friend and with President Trump’s envoys.”
The Gaza Executive Board, led by the United States and composed of officials from countries such as Turkey, Qatar and Egypt, “runs contrary to [Israel’s] policy,” Netanyahu’s office said on Saturday evening.
The announcement of its establishment “was not coordinated with Israel and runs contrary to its policy,” Jerusalem’s statement continued.
It added that Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar was instructed to discuss the matter with his American counterpart, Marco Rubio, who was named on Friday as a founding member of the Executive Board.
According to Smotrich’s post, “the original sin” was Jerusalem’s decision against establishing “a military administration, encouraging emigration and settlement and in this way ensuring Israel’s security for many years.”
That refusal, Smotrich continued, “gave rise to strange, convoluted arrangements to manage civilian life in Gaza that are not Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.” However, he added: “Even under that assumption, there must be red lines.”
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir tweeted that he “supports the prime minister regarding his important statement.”
“Gaza doesn’t need any ‘executive board’ to oversee its ‘reconstruction,’” he wrote. “It must be cleared of Hamas terrorists, who must be destroyed, alongside encouraging large-scale voluntary emigration in line with President Trump’s original plan.”
Trump said in February that the United States should “take over” Gaza and relocate its two million residents before clearing it and rebuilding.
Ben-Gvir on Saturday called on Netanyahu to instruct the Israel Defense Forces to “prepare to return to the war in the Strip with overwhelming force, in order to achieve the war’s central goal: Hamas’s destruction.”
Amichai Chikli, Israel’s diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism minister and a member of Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, said Jerusalem “cannot and will not accept” Turkish influence on its southern border, tweeting: “Erdoğan’s Turkey is Hamas.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has turned his country “into a regional aggressor responsible for unprecedented massacres and brutal repression, from the Kurds in Afrin, Aleppo, and Deir Hafir, to Alawites and Druze,” wrote Chikli.
The Gaza Executive Board includes members such as U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Qatari diplomat Ali Al-Thawadi and Egyptian General Intelligence Service Director Maj. Gen. Hassan Rashad.
Fidan in July 2024 expressed “deep sorrow” after top Hamas terrorist Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran.
“I learned with deep sorrow that my dear brother Ismail Haniyeh was martyred in Iran,” Fidan wrote in a July 31, 2024, post on X. Fidan said Haniyeh “never lost his faith in peace,” and offered condolences.
Calling Haniyeh a “symbol” of Palestinian “resistance,” Fidan said his “noble memory will live on in the just cause of the Palestinian people.”
The Gaza Executive Board will assist the high representative for Gaza, former U.N. diplomat Nickolay Mladenov, as well as the new National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, another committee under the Board of Peace that comprises 15 Palestinians and is led by former Palestinian Authority Deputy Transportation Minister Ali Shaath.
