Israeli Officials Challenge Netanyahu, Laying Bare Government Divisions

With his emergency war cabinet on the brink of disintegrating over what opponents view as his dithering prosecution of Israel's offensive in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been challenged to make some stark choices by his two main partners in running the military campaign.

Mr. Netanyahu's defense minister, Yoav Gallant, from his own conservative Likud party, and Benny Gantz, a centrist former military chief and Netanyahu rival who joined the government soon after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack that prompted the war, have demanded that the Israeli leader come up with a decisive strategy. While their demands laid bare the divisions in Mr. Netanyahu's wartime government, analysts said they were unlikely to bring about major change.

Both Mr. Gallant and Mr. Gantz have implicitly accused the Israeli leader in recent days of putting his political survival ahead of national security. They are demanding that Mr. Netanyahu choose between an endgame that would leave postwar Gaza under Israeli military control, as his far-right coalition partners want, or, as they suggest, have some kind of Palestinian alternative to Hamas take over with international support.

More broadly, they have called on him to stop appeasing his hard-line political allies at the expense of any semblance of national consensus, even as he continues to send Israeli soldiers into battle.

Mr. Gantz set an ultimatum, saying on Saturday that his National Unity party would quit the government by June 8 should Mr. Netanyahu choose "the path of the zealots" and fail to pave a strategic path forward.

But his party's exit alone would not loosen Mr. Netanyahu's hold on power: The far-right and religiously ultraconservative coalition he formed after the November 2022 election would still command a majority of 64 seats in the 120-seat Parliament. Still, it would leave Mr. Netanyahu in a more precarious position, reliant on his hard-line partners and with less domestic and international legitimacy.

"Gantz's problem is that he can't alone produce a war and postwar strategy, pressure Netanyahu to come up with one or create enough pressure to bring down the current Israeli government," said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The demands presented by Mr. Gantz and Mr. Gallant come as pressure is growing in Israel for clear government decisions that will bring home the 128 hostages remaining in Gaza, of whom an unknown number are already dead, and also dismantle Hamas's military capabilities and ability to lead in Gaza.

Those goals may be mutually exclusive, analysts say, since Hamas is demanding an Israeli commitment to end the war as a condition for any hostage deal.

Some critics saw Mr. Gantz's move as too hesitant, calling into question his credentials as an electable alternative to Mr. Netanyahu.

"A three-week ultimatum? That's ridiculous!" said Mitchell Barak, an Israeli pollster and analyst who worked as an aide to Mr. Netanyahu in the 1990s.

Between now and June 8, Mr. Barak said, any number of things could happen in Israeli politics, in Gaza and elsewhere. "It makes him look not serious," he added.

Mr. Gantz left the parliamentary opposition in October out of a sense of national responsibility, he said at the time, and joined the war cabinet as one of its three principal members, along with Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant.

Mr. Gallant has demanded that Mr. Netanyahu engage in a serious discussion about who, or what, should replace Hamas in a postwar Gaza. He challenged the prime minister to state clearly whether or not he supports his far-right partners' agenda of Israeli military rule in the enclave and said last week that he had tried to advance a plan for a "non-hostile Palestinian governing alternative" to Hamas, without elaborating.

Some analysts also said that Mr. Gantz's demands were largely amorphous and that his own suggestions lacked clarity.

Mr. Gantz called for the hostages to be brought home, for Hamas control to end and for the Gaza Strip to be disarmed — without saying how to achieve those goals.

Even as he called for a day-after strategy for Gaza, Mr. Gantz went along with Mr. Netanyahu in saying that the Palestinian Authority, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, should not take over Gaza — flouting the position of the United States, Israel's most important international ally.

Instead, Mr. Gantz called more vaguely for a U.S.-European-Arab-Palestinian administration that would run civilian affairs in Gaza and "lay the foundations for a future alternative that is neither Hamas nor Abbas."

— Isabel Kershner reporting from Jerusalem

The U.S. national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday as the United States and other countries push Israel to limit its incursion into Rafah, where Israel had initially encouraged Palestinians to seek safety.

The United States has repeatedly called on Israel not to launch a full-scale invasion of Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza. Although Israel has labeled its current operation "limited," about 800,000 people have fled after evacuation orders, while satellite imagery shows widening destruction.

The prime minister's office said after the meeting that the two men had discussed the fighting in Gaza, with an emphasis on Rafah, humanitarian aid and efforts to return the hostages held in Gaza.

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Mr. Sullivan was expected to stress the need for a targeted approach to fighting Hamas in Gaza and to emphasize American opposition to a full-scale attack on Rafah. Earlier this month, President Biden said in an interview with CNN that the United States would not supply weapons for a major Israeli offensive in Rafah. In a hearing in the Senate in May, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told lawmakers that the United States had paused a shipment of heavy bombs to Israel, citing concern about a sweeping invasion of the city.

The Israeli military said its forces were pressing on in the eastern outskirts of Rafah on Saturday, and aid officials in the western part of the city said they heard strikes and artillery fire. Hamas said its fighters had fired on Israeli troops in eastern Rafah and close to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

Last week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken warned that recent gains in getting desperately needed humanitarian aid to people in the Gaza Strip risked being undone by the fighting in southern Gaza, and he called for a "clear concrete plan" for postwar governance in Gaza.

At the same time, talks for a cease-fire to release at least some Israeli hostages appear to be stalled. The prime minister of Qatar, which has been acting as an intermediary between Israel and Hamas, said last week that negotiations were at "almost a stalemate" and had been set back by Israel's military offensive in Rafah.

Mr. Sullivan's trip to Israel followed meetings in Saudi Arabia, a visit that was scheduled to happen last month but was delayed after he cracked a rib. In the interim, tensions between the United States and Israel over the Rafah invasion and Israel's conduct of the war have escalated.

Mr. Sullivan visited Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Saturday to discuss a possible Middle East peace deal that would normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel and create a Palestinian state. The deal would also involve a U.S.-Saudi mutual defense pact and cooperation on a civilian nuclear program in the kingdom.

During their meeting, Prince Mohammed and Mr. Sullivan reviewed a "nearly-final draft" of strategic agreements between the two countries, which are "almost finished," according to a statement published by the official Saudi Press Agency. It said the two governments continued to work on a "credible pathway" toward creating a Palestinian state that will "satisfy the aspirations and legitimate rights of the Palestinian people."

But Mr. Netanyahu has been resistant to the deal, pushing back on talks of a Palestinian state. Mr. Sullivan was expected to try to advance the deal in his meeting with the Israeli leader.

Vivian Nereim contributed reporting.

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The northern town of Jabaliya had already come under fierce attacks from the Israeli military earlier in the war, killing many civilians and demolishing large parts of the suburb. So, as Israeli ground forces moved to other parts of the Gaza Strip and military strikes focused elsewhere, residents thought they had experienced their worst days.

But last week, the Israeli military dropped leaflets again over Jabaliya, where tens of thousands of people are living, ordering them to leave as it prepared to launch a renewed offensive.

"When the Israelis dropped the leaflets, people were terrified, especially given what they experienced previously," said Iman Abu Jalhum, 23, who graduated from medical school two months before the war began and has been volunteering in hospitals treating the wounded. "We thought given that we have already been attacked that we were safe; the Israelis have already been here."

Soon after the leaflets dropped, so too did the bombs, she said. Ms. Abu Jalhum, her 16-year-old sister and her parents fled their home under bombardment. She only had time to throw a few items of clothing into a bag and put on her prayer shawl.

Her father, who has back issues, struggled to walk along the road. Eventually, they found a donkey cart to take him the rest of the way, a few miles south.

Israel said it had renewed the offensive in Jabaliya on May 11 because Hamas was trying to reassemble its infrastructure and operatives in the area. Hamas accused Israel of "escalating its aggression against civilians all across Gaza" and vowed to continue fighting.

At least 15 civilians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Saturday in Jabaliya and 30 others wounded, according to Wafa, the Palestinian Authority's official news agency. Ambulance and emergency crews have been unable to reach the area to rescue the injured and retrieve the bodies, it reported.

The Israeli military on Saturday said it had "engaged and eliminated" Hamas fighters in Jabaliya in a number of battles and located several tunnel shafts. Hamas said that its fighters destroyed an Israeli tank south of Jabaliya.

Ms. Abu Jalhum and her family are among at least 64,000 people who were displaced from Jabaliya and a neighboring town in the past week, according to the main U.N. agency aiding Palestinians, UNRWA.

They are now sheltering a few miles south in a bombed-out building, where the smell of dead bodies that have not yet been recovered hangs in the air. Strikes still hit nearby, she says, but there are fewer explosions and no clashes between Israeli forces and Hamas fighters.

On Thursday, Ms. Abu Jalhum tried to go back to Jabaliya to check on her home, walking for 45 minutes along streets covered in debris. But as she neared her neighborhood, explosions were hitting too close to continue, she said.

"Yes, we have some courage, but we're still afraid," she said. "You might see martyrs killed in the street that no one can reach. You're afraid there could be a sniper. The drones might target anyone there walking in the streets."

Her family has had to flee several times during the course of the seven-month war, and they have always gone to stay with relatives in the same area. This time, the offensive is more expansive and intense, she said.

"We just want to go home," she said, adding, "We're so exhausted. You see it in our faces. We want to cry at times, but we're unable to."

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Representative Elise Stefanik on Sunday addressed some lawmakers at Israel's Parliament, denouncing President Biden for delaying some military aid to the country and praising former President Donald J. Trump as a true ally of the Jewish state.

Ms. Stefanik, Republican of New York, defended Israel's military campaign and urged the country to pursue total victory in the war against Hamas.

"There is no excuse for an American president to block aid to Israel," said Ms. Stefanik, who addressed the gathering at the Knesset. "I have been a leading proponent and partner to President Trump in his historic support for Israeli independence and security."

Ms. Stefanik's speech — which she said was made at the invitation of Amir Ohana, the speaker of Israel's Parliament — builds on Republican attempts to capitalize on Democratic divisions over Israel's response to the Oct. 7 attacks.

A spokesman for Mr. Biden said there was "no better friend to Israel" than the current president.

"He was the first American president to visit Israel during wartime — in the aftermath of the horrific Oct. 7th terrorist attacks — and the first president to order the U.S. military to defend Israel from a foreign nation's attack," a White House spokesman, Andrew Bates, said in a statement. "President Biden's support for Israel's security is ironclad. Unlike some figures on the right, President Biden did not rail against the Israeli government in the days after Oct. 7, nor has he ever praised terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, and he will not be lectured by any person who was silent in the face of those offensive statements."

The Israeli Parliament is currently in recess. Ms. Stefanik addressed the Knesset Caucus for Jewish and Pro-Israel Students on Campuses Around the World, according to The Times of Israel. Her remarks, in which she also attacked U.S. colleges for failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitism, appeared intended to curry favor with Mr. Trump, who has mentioned Ms. Stefanik as a potential running mate.

Ms. Stefanik was once a Trump critic but has reinvented herself over the past few years as one of his most outspoken defenders — echoing his policies and his rhetoric alike. In recent months, she has been the face of a House panel that has interrogated university presidents over allegations of antisemitism on campus.

Ms. Stefanik, a former George W. Bush White House aide, has positioned herself as one of Mr. Trump's most loyal defenders in Congress, a role she initially staked out during his first impeachment in 2019.

Her prepared remarks for Sunday mentioned Mr. Trump by name several times while highlighting several of his administration's accomplishments, including a package of Middle East deals known as the Abraham Accords and moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.