Israeli opposition politician Avigdor Liberman announced on Monday that he will meet with National Unity chief Benny Gantz, who announced his resignation from the coalition and Netanyahu’s war cabinet a day earlier.
The Yisrael Beytenu chairman has previously called on Gideon Sa’ar, Yair Lapid and Gantz to set up a “joint war room so that we can topple this government and establish another government,” Israeli media reported.
Asked if Gantz would now join his “war room,” Liberman answered that he “hopes they will join… in order to work to replace the government,” according to The Times of Israel.
Earlier on Sunday, Gantz quit the Israeli emergency government in a sign of deepening divisions in the Zionist entity over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s post-war plans for Gaza.
Speaking during a news conference in Tel Aviv, Gantz said Netanyahu “is preventing us from approaching true victory, which is the justification for the painful ongoing crisis.”
Considered by some to be a potential challenger for power in the Zionist entity, Gantz called on Netanyahu to set a date for elections.
Netanyahu, for his part, responded with a post on X: “Benny, this is not the time to quit the campaign, this is the time to join forces.”
Haredi Evasion Law
On the other hand, tensions rise in the Israeli regime over a vote on a bill to lower the age at which ultra-Orthodox students are exempted from military service.
Liberman called on members of Netanyahu’s Likud party to oppose the Israeli prime minister’s Haredi enlistment legislation this evening, stating that they need to “vote for Israel’s security interests” rather than those of the coalition.
If eventually approved, the legislation would lower the age of exemption from mandatory service for Haredi Torah students from the current 26 to 21 and “very slowly” increase the rate of ultra-Orthodox conscription.
For his part, Lapid slammed the Israeli government for “abandoning” servicemen in order to pass a draft “evasion” law on behalf of the ultra-Orthodox.
“The right-wing government is going to promote evasion from the IDF today. To promote refusal. The government today is abandoning the IDF fighters in the middle of the battle in favor of petty, self-interested, cowardly and cynical politics,” Lapid said ahead of the vote.
The Israeli opposition politician took aim directly at Netanyahu, stating that “every Jewish mother will know that this prime minister, who when there are operational successes runs to take pictures in a hospital like an Instagram model, is the first to abandon the IDF fighters when it serves his political interest.”
Source: Israeli media
