Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s minister of public security, has threatened to lead his faction out of the coalition government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over a tepid response to a hail of Palestinian terror rockets.
Palestinian groups fired over 100 rockets at Israel after the death of an imprisoned terrorist from the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad group, who had been on a hunger strike. Three foreign nationals were reportedly wounded. Israel struck over a dozen targets in Gaza in response. As usual, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) noted, some of the Palestinian rockets fell on Palestinians.
Speaking from a home in the town of Sderot, which is near the Gaza border and bears the brunt of rocket attacks, Ben Gvir said that his party, Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Strength”), would leave the government if Netanyahu did not mount a more aggressive response. In response, Netanyahu’s Likud Party said that Ben Gvir was welcome to leave — though doing so could topple the coalition, delighting the left (and Israel’s enemies).
Some residents of Sderot and other towns on the periphery believe the government is more aggressive in protecting the elites of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Hence Ben Gvir’s threat.
However, as Yonah Jeremy Bob argues in the Jerusalem Post, Israel cannot afford the risk of a wider confrontation at the moment — not with internal divisions and the looming threat of a nuclear Iran, whose proxies are already attacking Israel.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.