The Israeli far right is blocking the truce in Gaza and risks delaying the entry into force of the agreement reached in Doha until Monday , starting with the release of the first three hostages.
" If the agreement is approved, we will submit letters of resignation and will not be part of the government . We will return to be part of it only if the war in Gaza resumes," thundered in the evening the extremist hawk of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir on the eve of the executive meeting called to vote on the agreement.
According to Israeli media, Benyamin Netanyahu is now ready to postpone everything until Saturday evening : the ministers will meet tomorrow as initially planned, but the meeting could be suspended and resumed after Shabbat . After the vote, opponents will have 48 hours to appeal to the Supreme Court: this would lead to Monday.
That something was going wrong in the talks in Qatar (but above all in Jerusalem) on the ceasefire and the release of the hostages became clear at 2:18 on the night between Wednesday and Thursday. When a message from Netanyahu's office made it known that during a call the negotiating team had told the prime minister that Hamas wanted to break an explicit clause that gives Israel the right to veto the release of Palestinian prisoners considered symbols of terrorism, on both sides but with clearly different feelings. Circumstance denied by the Palestinian faction but a few hours later, at 9 in the morning, the religious Zionist party of Bezalel Smotrich began to get in the way. In the end, the far-right finance minister glossed over the threat to bring down the government, but asked the prime minister to put in writing that immediately after the first phase of the agreement and the release of 33 hostages, which should begin at 12.15 on Sunday, the army will return to ravage Gaza until the complete destruction of Hamas .
Whether Netanyahu actually signed such a document is not known. In the evening, however, the spirits seemed less heated, at least on Smotrich's side, and the powerful leader of the right-wing religious party Shas, Rabbi Arie Deri, announced that the solution had been found (with Hamas and also with Smotrich): "I have received confirmation that all the obstacles have been overcome," he declared during the party's annual conference in Jerusalem.
