Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir officially announced his resignation from the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the strongest protest against the ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza.
In a statement, Ben Gvir’s party, Jewish Power (Otzma Yehudit), slammed the ceasefire as a “capitulation to Hamas.” The party decried the deal for facilitating the “release of hundreds of murderers” and for what it described as a “renunciation of the Israeli military’s achievements” during the Gaza conflict.
With the resignation of Ben Gvir, Netanyahu still retains a wafer-thin majority in the Knesset. Gvir had threatened to pull his party out of the coalition over the cease-fire and hostage deal if it went through in its current form.
Israel had said it would press on with military activity in the Gaza Strip before the deal until Hamas named hostages it planned to free, which the Islamists did on Sunday shortly before a 6:30 GMT deadline for the cease-fire. The group has revealed the names of three hostages it intends to release.
But just before the deadline, Netanyahu and the IDF modified that to say the ceasefire would not begin until the list of hostages was delivered. “The prime minister informed the IDF that the ceasefire, at 8:30 a.m. as scheduled to start, will not begin until Israel receives the list of hostages promised by Hamas,” the prime minister’s office confirmed. An hour past the deadline, Hamas published the names of the three Israeli hostages via Telegram.
The Israel-Hamas War began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a surprise attack against southern Israel. That attack included the firing of more than 4,300 rockets, with militants breaching the Gaza-Israel barrier and attacking military and civilian communities. The attack caused massive casualties: some 1,200 people were killed, and more than 250 were taken hostage into Gaza.
