Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir boasted on Tuesday about Israel blocking a Gaza ceasefire deal “time after time” for months now, even as Western media and U.S. officials have pinned blame for the lack of a deal on Hamas.
In a post on social media, Ben-Gvir said: “In the last year, using our political power, we managed to prevent this deal from going ahead, time after time.”
The remark is a show of what advocates for Palestinian rights and even many media reports have long said: that it is officials from Israel, not Hamas, that have acted as the main roadblock during ceasefire talks, despite the narrative adopted by pro-Israel U.S. entities in public.
Since U.S. and other officials began negotiating a ceasefire deal, Western media outlets and officials like President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have repeatedly blamed Hamas negotiators for blocking deals for a ceasefire and hostage exchange.
As numerous reports showed over the course of the negotiations, these claims have been false from the start: Hamas quickly accepted the U.S.’s three-phased ceasefire proposal after Biden announced it last spring, while Israeli officials have continuously disrupted talks and outright said that they will not stop until they’ve achieved their ever-shifting, exterminationist war goals.
This week, Hamas and Israeli officials have said that a deal is imminent, with Hamas officials saying that it has a chance of going through as long as Israel doesn’t impose another one of their last-minute demands.
The details of the agreement are yet to be unveiled, but Israeli media has reported that the framework is similar to Biden’s proposal that Hamas had agreed to last year. It would involve the release of some of the roughly 100 Israeli captives still being held in Gaza, reports have found.
In his post, Ben-Gvir, one of the most extremist figures in Netanyahu’s far right government, threatened to resign from his position if a hostage deal is reached, calling it “horrific.”
He called on Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to resign alongside him, which would weaken Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition in the government and make it more difficult for him to pass legislation in a time when the prime minister is already in a tenuous position politically. Netanyahu is also exposed legally, domestically with a corruption case, and internationally with the International Criminal Court’s case against him.
Ben-Gvir said that the ceasefire would amount to “surrender to Hamas” and “erases the war’s achievements” — even after Israel has destroyed nearly all of Gaza, corralled its residents into a tiny area deprived of basic needs, and laid the groundwork for annexation. “Even if we are in opposition, we will not bring down Netanyahu, but this move is our only chance to prevent its implementation,” Ben-Gvir said.
Smotrich announced his opposition to the deal on Monday, saying that now is the time for Israel to go even further in its assault and “occupy and cleanse the entire Strip.”
At least one Israeli minister has said that the cabinet is going to approve the ceasefire deal anyway and does not need their votes to go forward.
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