Jun 17, 2024 03:28 PM IST
The war cabinet was created on October 11 to manage the country’s military campaigns against Hamas and Hezbollah
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dissolved the six-member war cabinet which was created on October 11 to manage the country’s military campaigns against Hamas and Hezbollah, Reuters reported on Monday.
The move comes days after centrist former general Benny Gantz, one of the three cabinet members, quit the Netanyahu-led coalition government.
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Netanyahu is now expected to hold consultations about the Gaza war with a small group of ministers, including Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer who had been in the war cabinet.
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The Israeli prime minister has been facing demands from the nationalist-religious partners in his coalition, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, to be included in the war cabinet.
The forum was formed after Gantz joined Netanyahu in a national unity government at the start of the war after Hamas killed some 1,200 people during its October 7 attack and took 250 hostages.
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It also included Gantz’s partner Gadi Eisenkot and Aryeh Deri, head of the religious party Shas, as observers. However, last week, both Gantz and Eisenkot, left the government over what they said was Netanyahu’s failure to form a strategy for the Gaza war, according to Reuters.
Israel-Hamas war
Since the October 7 attack, Israel’s military campaign against Hamas has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health ministry figures.
Israel’s military offensive has destroyed much of Gaza and plunged it into a humanitarian crisis, with the UN reporting hundreds of thousands of people on the brink of famine.
On Sunday, the Israeli military announced that it would pause fighting during daytime hours along a route in southern Gaza to free up a backlog of humanitarian aid deliveries for Palestinians.
The move by the military, however, has been criticised by Netanyahu, reported Reuters.
“When the prime minister heard the reports of an 11-hour humanitarian pause in the morning, he turned to his military secretary and made it clear that this was unacceptable to him,” the agency quoted an unidentified Israeli official as saying.
