Israel's unity government faces stress test as Gaza invasion looms

The Hamas attack has led to a sense of political urgency to focus on the war - but sharp political divisions still linger

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, leads a situation-assessment meeting in Tel Aviv last week. EPA

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The October 7 Hamas attack on Israel that left about 1,300 Israelis dead has led to a unity government and war cabinet, but tensions could be inevitable over the role of far-right ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet.

Key issues at stake include the possibility of far more Palestinian civilian deaths in Gaza, where at least 2,700 people have already died in Israeli bombardments, as well as massive instability in the occupied West Bank.

In the occupied territory, far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have been vocal in support of extremist Israeli settlers, and blamed by many observers for stirring up settler violence amid a wider rise in deaths this year.

Neither are in the war cabinet but both are members of Mr Netanyahu’s government, formed in December 2022. Mr Smotrich now heads a special ministerial council focused on the civilian economy in relation to the war effort, which also comprises ministers from opposition member Benny Gantz's National Unity party.

Mr Gantz, who formed the war cabinet with Mr Netanyahu on Friday, has been sharply critical of both ministers and the war of words has cut both ways. This could overshadow a new sense of political unity, where debates on non-emergency legislation have been paused.

During Israel’s nine-month crisis over Mr Netanyahu’s radical judicial overhaul plans – which opposition figures condemned as a coup and prompted the largest protests in Israel’s history – Finance Minister Mr Smotrich said Mr Gantz and former prime minister Yair Lapid had allied with foreign protest elements.

They had “crossed all red lines and became opposition to the state”, Mr Smotrich said in September.

Mr Lapid, who heads the centrist Yesh Atid party, has accused Mr Netanyahu of “unpardonable failure” for the intelligence fiasco that led to last Saturday’s massacre. He made the unity government conditional on the exclusion of far-right ministers.

Mr Smotrich on Monday said his government had failed to protect Israelis on October 7, saying he "took responsibility for what has happened and what will happen".

Violence in the occupied West Bank

Mr Gantz and Mr Lapid have also been harshly critical of Mr Ben-Gvir, who has been linked to an extremist group connected to a 1994 Israeli terrorist attack in Hebron that killed 29 Palestinians, including several children.

Mr Ben-Gvir has since said he renounces many of the Kach terror group’s ideas, such as the deportation of all Arabs from Israel, but he attended a memorial to its founder in November.

He has drawn controversy for pushing for a paramilitary National Guard, condemned by critics as a militia project, which was given the go-ahead in April. The force has yet to be established and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has been dismissive of it – also calling it a militia – but Mr Ben-Gvir is pressing ahead with new plans following last week’s attack.

He has already distributed 4,000 rifles, out of an order of 10,000, to civilian community protection forces, ostensibly to prevent a repeat of the October 7 attack, where many villagers attacked near Gaza by the Hamas onslaught lacked weapons.

“We will turn the world upside-down so that towns are protected,” Mr Ben-Gvir said at the time.

Some analysts say this posturing, and his headlong clashes with Mr Gantz and Mr Lapid this year, will make him a long-term target for centrists, when the current fighting ends.

"The Israelis will leave the political retribution until the fighting has stopped and politicians like Ben-Gvir are right in the political crosshairs," says Michael Stephens, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

"Many blame him for the diversion of focus into the West Bank and I suspect politically he can’t survive."

How Israel now responds to the security crisis amid the Gaza invasion is seen as critical to Mr Netanyahu’s future and polls show he is unlikely to bounce back, even if the nation comes close to its goal of destroying Hamas.

A Dialogue Centre poll found 75 per cent of Israelis – out of more than 600 polled – believe the government bears most of the responsibility for the failures that led to the attack.

“The extremists in the current government, especially Interior Minister Ben-Gvir, are under tremendous pressure to show to their voters that they are doing something during the current war,” says Meir Javedanfar, who teaches the political economy of the Middle East at Reichman University in Jerusalem.

“This is why Ben-Gvir has resorted to populistic and inflammatory actions and remarks. The situation in West Bank is very fragile. Benny Gantz is going to do his best to create a pragmatic decision-making environment in the security cabinet. However, it's not certain that he will succeed entirely.

“This is because Netanyahu will also have to satisfy his coalition partners, which include extremists such as Ben-Gvir. This will most probably mean that, for now, the Israeli government will not take harsh measures against terrorist attacks by Israeli extremists in the West Bank against Palestinians. And this could only inflame the situation in the West Bank.”

Gaza endgame

In the meantime, Israel's government will have to make complex strategic plans for a post-conflict Gaza – a war that will bring unprecedented destruction to the enclave of 2.3 million, where already more than one million have been displaced.

As the war grinds on – likely for weeks or months – the risk of wider regional escalation looms, explaining frantic US diplomatic activity and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's whirlwind tour of Israel, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt.

"I think the US have done an excellent job in ensuring certain dramatic regional escalations cannot happen. I feel Blinken has been right on top of that," Mr Stephens says.

"So, the question then is, for Israel what is a Gaza without Hamas? Is it even achievable?

“Everyone is hoping that the government does have a contingency plan. But we don’t know. All we know until now is that the government intends 'to wipe Hamas from the face of the Earth'," Mr Javedanfar says.

“But this is just a slogan. No one can wipe out an ideology and a movement. We just don’t know what the government intends to do after it has dealt a heavy blow to the Hamas leadership. We are hoping that the presence of Benny Gantz and his colleagues will mean that a contingency plan is in place.

"But that’s all we have for now: hope and assumptions. Nothing else."