Coalition Knesset members and ministers from Otzma Yehudit, the Religious Zionist Party and the Likud criticized the government for what they claimed was its restrained response to the terror and rocket attacks last week and over the weekend.
Otzma Yehudit chairman and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in a long Facebook post on Friday that while the current government needed to do more and act with a heavier hand, the previous one was also to blame for the situation.
Ben-Gvir wrote that he had not changed his commitment to a national security approach of answering terror with “disproportionate force,” but that he only had partial influence on the government’s decisions.
Ben-Gvir says he will not vote against government
He also revealed that he had considered leaving the government and supporting it from the outside, but that he decided against it for the time being.
The national security minister wrote that he was “considering a thousand times over” whether to quit the government, but that in any case he would not vote to bring it down, since it was “a thousand times better and more responsible than the previous government, in every parameter.”
The decision hinged on whether he could contribute effectively from within the government, and that his assessment was that he still could do so, Ben-Gvir explained.
“Sometimes our short memory leads us to forget what the previous government did in response to terror attacks,” he wrote.
He criticized former defense minister, National Unity Party chairman Benny Gantz, for hosting the “terrorist Abu Mazen” in his home, for “distributing” NIS 500 million to the Palestinian Authority which “transfers grants to the families of terrorists” and for “removing crucial roadblocks in Judea and Samaria.”
Ben-Gvir claimed that the Lebanon maritime border agreement signed by the previous government shortly before the November 1 election served as another example of the “enormous damage” that it left behind, which will take “a very long time” to fix.
Leaders of the previous government continue to harm national security even when they are not in power, by “encouraging refusal [of reserve duty],” damaging the economy and claiming that the IDF is breaking down and that Israeli society is crumbling, which “without doubt” encourages Israel’s enemies to attack it, Ben-Gvir added.
“Those irresponsible, dissolute [people] are the last who can preach to us,” he wrote.
The national security minister claimed that his government had accomplished “very much” on security, citing as successes a NIS 9 billion budget for his ministry (which, however, is not part of the budget that passed the Knesset’s first reading in March); the decision to form a National Guard; the destruction of dozens of illegally built houses in east Jerusalem; the law that passed in the Knesset to allow police officers to enter houses to search for illegal weapons without a warrant in certain scenarios; the law to remove residency or citizenship of terrorists who possess those statuses; closing bakeries and limiting the time allowed for showers in prisons where terrorists are incarcerated; and releasing the logjam in personal arms permits.
“It is obvious that we would want more – it is obvious that I want an unequivocal response to the terror, rockets and incitement – and I promise to continue fighting with all my power for our doctrine, yours and mine,” Ben-Gvir wrote.
But this would take time, he said, especially in systems that have “believed for a long time in buying temporary quiet.
“We promised fully right-wing [governance], and I am fighting for this to happen,” he said in conclusion.
Opposition leader and Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid responded that, “on this sad day, just a few hours after the murder of two young sisters, the minister for TikTok Itamar Ben-Gvir chooses to write a pathetic and whining post in which all he wants is to avoid responsibility and blame others for his failures. I do not want to think what he would say about this failure of a government if he was in the opposition.”
Gantz said in response: “Ben-Gvir’s statement is complete madness. There has never been a minister in the cabinet who has said so much about security and understood so little. There has never been a minister in the cabinet who, while rockets are being fired on our citizens and our daughters are murdered on the roads, chooses to sabotage Israeli cohesiveness and damage its deterrence. Netanyahu must condemn the statement and fire him immediately.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a short statement on Thursday evening that “Israel will not accept attacks against its citizens,” and that “the necessary goal is a harsh blow to terror and returning the State of Israel’s deterrence.”
Smotrich’s fellow party member, National Missions Minister Orit Struck, also wrote a long Facebook post on Friday, in which she argued that while the security deterioration was taking place during her ministry’s watch, it was actually because of the “uneven ground” that the government stood on when it began its term.
Struck gave as examples the formation of the Palestinian Authority and the “bringing to here battalions of terrorists” during the Oslo Accords in the 1990s; the removal of roadblocks in the West Bank in 2009 at the request of then-US president Barack Obama; the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, which was caused by the “instigators of the Disengagement [from Gaza in 2005]”; the Second Lebanon War; the “imagined quiet” in Gaza following Operation Guardian of the Walls in 2021; the Lebanon Maritime deal; and a number of other examples.
Still, Struck said that it was her government’s responsibility to change this – in deterrence against Lebanon, demilitarization of Gaza and more. Her party must “shake the table” for this to happen, she concluded.
Likud MK Danny Danon also criticized the government, writing on Twitter on Friday: “The people of Israel expect a much harsher and determined response than what we have seen so far. The cabinet must give the IDF clear instructions – to take off its gloves and begin to act powerfully.”