Ben-Gvir’s party to rejoin Israel’s ruling coalition
The Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, led by far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir, will return to Netanyahu’s coalition government, it has announced.
In a joint statement with Likud, Netanyahu’s party, Otzma Yehudit confirmed that it would “return to the government” along with its ministers.
The hardline party, which opposed a ceasefire with Hamas and pressed for Israel to cut off aid to Gaza, had left the coalition in January. Its return strengthens Netanyahu’s position before a crucial budget vote expected next week.
After his party confirmed the move, Ben-Gvir shared a photograph of himself shaking hands with Netanyahu on X, accompanied by the words, “Together in strength, for the people of Israel!”
Palestinians in eastern Gaza pushed into forced displacement yet again
The areas Israel has issued forced displacement orders for are in the eastern part of the Gaza Strip, including the entire city of Beit Hanoon.
This is not the first time we’re seeing this. There has been repeated enforced displacement of people as soon as they return to their homes.
The Israeli military has been quite vague and giving contradictory information about where people should take shelter.
As of now, there is not a single safe place across Gaza. People are dying inside their homes, they’re dying inside public facilities, and they’re dying inside schools they’ve turned to for shelter.
Just in the past couple of minutes, we’ve seen the body of a man recovered from under the rubble in northern Gaza’s Jabalia. We’ve been told by family members that there are still more [people] trapped under the rubble.
Three reasons behind Israel’s resumption of Gaza war
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara has said there are at least three explanations for why Israel decided to break the ceasefire and resume its war on Gaza.
On the military level, Netanyahu had long expressed his intention to continue the war until Hamas was destroyed. The group’s theatrical release of captives “humiliated Netanyahu” and persuaded his camp that the war must continue, Bishara said.
“There’s also a strategic rationale, and that’s building on Trump’s vision of transfer [of Palestinians out of Gaza],” the analyst said. “You cannot transfer millions of people without war.”
Lastly, Netanyahu “is on trial on a number of corruption charges and needs to deflect the attention away by launching another bloody campaign in Gaza”.
The move will not be welcomed by Egypt, which played a key role in the ceasefire negotiations, as well as Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
“The entire region is on the brink of something,” Bishara said. “Clearly, this humiliation of [Egyptian] President [Abdel Fattah] el-Sisi cannot go by with total impunity.”
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