by David Isaac, Amelie Botbol
The party is increasingly skeptical of Netanyahu's determination to finish Hamas once and for all.
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Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says he
"lost confidence" in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Aug. 9, 2025.
Source: Bezalel Smotrich/X. |
The Religious Zionism Party, increasingly exasperated with the conduct of the war, is considering bringing down the Netanyahu government, sources told JNS on Sunday.
The development comes after the Security Cabinet overnight Thursday decided by a “decisive majority” to approve Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to expand the war effort by gaining control of Gaza City.
“The decision on Thursday was, in the party’s view, a severe mistake and a retreat from the government’s determination to truly achieve victory and defeat Hamas,” one source said. “If this decision is not changed, we are headed toward dissolving the government and going to elections.”
The party’s leader, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, issued a blistering denunciation of the prime minister on Saturday evening.
The breaking point appears to have come with the reversal, in Religious Zionism’s view, of Netanyahu’s determination to conquer all of the Gaza Strip and crush the Hamas terrorist group once and for all.
Although the prime minister continues to declare that Israel intends to conquer all of Gaza, including in an interview with Fox News on Thursday, Aug. 7, shortly before he entered a Security Cabinet meeting to seek approval for the decision, Smotrich, who attended the meeting, said the decision that was taken is not all it seems.
Instead of an operation to seize control of Gaza (roughly 25% of the Strip remains unconquered) and ensure victory, it is merely an attempt to pressure Hamas to return to the negotiating table over the release of the remaining 50 hostages, of whom 20 are estimated to still be alive, he said.
“The prime minister and the Cabinet succumbed to weakness, and let emotion win over common sense,” Smotrich said in a video post on X.
Religious Zionist Knesset member Tzvi Sukkot, in an X post on Sunday, seconded, “If we return to 10/6/23 and decide to abandon the war’s objectives, it is an existential danger to the State of Israel. If this is the situation, in my opinion, we need to go to elections.”
Religious Zionism MK Simcha Rothman, chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, agreed that the government’s failure to fully defeat Hamas could lead to early elections.
“I don’t know what will happen in the end. I am sure that if this lack of faith by Minister Smotrich in the ability of this government to end the war and eliminate Hamas continues, then the answer is probably ‘yes,'” Rothman told JNS on Sunday.
The government’s war aim
Smotrich has been warning for two years that the government had been making a “major mistake” by effectively swapping out as its war aim the elimination of Hamas with that of negotiating with the terror group to free the hostages, Rothman said.
Hamas has repeatedly rejected ceasefire-for-hostages proposals, Rothman noted. “Every time Netanyahu gets a negative response from Hamas—and the negotiators from this and the previous administration were very clear that Hamas does not want a deal—at some point, one should say that the deal is off the table and that we will go all in. As Trump said, ‘Open the gates of hell on Hamas.’”
But Netanyahu is unwilling to abandon negotiations and therein lies the problem, because Israel doesn’t have “endless time,” neither for the soldiers nor for the hostages, Rothman said.
“We have to push through. We have to take down Hamas. To keep this negotiating window open is the mistake that has kept the war stuck for so long. It’s not good for winning the war. It’s not good for Israel,” he said.
Sources close to the prime minister rejected the criticism, saying that there is currently no partial hostage deal on the horizon, nor a comprehensive deal that will lead to the release of all the hostages and an end to the war, Channel 14‘s diplomatic correspondent Tamir Morag reported on Sunday.
Israel is moving forward until the entire Gaza Strip is conquered and Hamas is eliminated, the sources told Morag.
Netanyahu on Friday reiterated that Israel has no intention of occupying Gaza, saying the expansion of the war is aimed at destroying Hamas and freeing the local population from its regime of terror.
“We are not going to occupy Gaza—we are going to free Gaza from Hamas,” said Netanyahu.
“Gaza will be demilitarized, and a peaceful civilian administration will be established, one that is not the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas, and not any other terrorist organization,” he continued. “This will help free our hostages and ensure Gaza does not pose a threat to Israel in the future.”
Emerging reports in the Hebrew press appeared to support Religious Zionism’s version. Israel Hayom reported on Sunday that the deal approved by the Security Cabinet was a compromise.
Due to attrition in IDF reserves, the opposition to the government’s plan by the IDF chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, and the U.S. administration’s desire to exhaust all diplomatic avenues, the Cabinet agreed to Zamir’s plan to maintain military pressure from the army’s current positions, “with limited advances in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood and along the Netzarim Corridor,” Israel Hayom reported.
Amit Segal, Channel 12‘s chief political correspondent, reported similarly that the Security Cabinet decision did not call for defeating Hamas, but only authorized “intensified action in Gaza City.”
After Zamir raised difficulties, the compromise included conquering Gaza City, but with the proviso that if Hamas agreed to a deal, a ceasefire would be called and “the operation will stop, and the IDF will withdraw,” Segal posted to X on Sunday. He added that the government didn’t rule out a partial hostage deal.
Religious Zionism lawmaker Michal Woldiger told JNS on Sunday that her party continues to back the objectives set by the government at the outset of the war.
“We want to eradicate Hamas on a political, civil and security level, so that we can truly restore peace to the State of Israel—not for a year, two or three years, but for the long term,” she said.
“One of the important goals is also considering the conditions for releasing the hostages, and all of them in one go, not in stages, in a final form, in a powerful manner. These things are not new—as long as the government and the Cabinet have these goals in sight, we are in,” she continued.
However, Woldiger warned that her faction would not support a shift away from those objectives. “When they deviate—and we do see the beginning of a deviation—we are raising a flag and saying we will not be able to continue to be in, because what matters to us is the State of Israel and the Israeli people, the present generation but certainly also the generations to come,” she said.
“We do not want another October 7. Of course, we believe this is the right way to return all the kidnapped, because any other way, including the way that is being proposed now, is a way that actually gives Hamas the ability to play us and to continue to hold hostages for many more years,” she added.
In his X post, Smotrich acknowledged Israel’s achievements thus far against Hezbollah, Iran and, to a degree, against Hamas, but said “the goals of the war haven’t yet been completed.”
For weeks, he revealed, he had been working “intensively” with Netanyahu on a plan for a speedy military victory followed by a diplomatic move that would exact “a painful price” of Hamas, “destroy its military and civilian capabilities, and overwhelm it with unprecedented pressure to release the hostages.
“The prime minister seemed to support the plan. He debated with me on the details and broadcast that he was striving for a victory and this time he intended to go all the way. But to my regret, he immediately made a U-turn,” Smotrich said.
If the purpose of the IDF’s next maneuver is only to bring Hamas back to negotiations, the army will not operate at full power, Smotrich warned. Worse still, it will give Hamas an out at the moment of its choosing. The second it senses it’s on the brink of defeat, it will green-light negotiations so it can regroup, he said.
“That’s how you don’t defeat [your enemy], that’s how you don’t return hostages, that’s how you don’t win a war,” Smotrich said.
“I have lost faith that the prime minister is capable of, or wants, to lead the IDF [to victory],” he said.
Smotrich noted that he had supported the government despite difficult decisions with which he didn’t agree, including the release of terrorists, who had murdered Israelis, for the release of hostages.
Signaling he had reached the end of the line, Smotrich said, “To send tens of thousands of soldiers to maneuver in Gaza City at the risk of their lives, to pay a heavy political and international price just to put pressure on Hamas to release the hostages, and then stepping back, is an immoral and illogical injustice.
“Unfortunately, for the first time since the beginning of the war, I feel that I simply cannot stand behind this decision and back it. My conscience won’t allow me,” he said.
David Isaac, Amelie Botbol
Source: https://www.jns.org/religious-zionism-mulls-toppling-govt-as-smotrich-says-hes-lost-faith-in-pm/
