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- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has formed a unity government with centrist rival Benny Gantz.
- The extreme-right members of government that brought Netanyahu back into power will remain.
- Israel appears to be preparing for an invasion of Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a political rival on Wednesday announced an emergency government for the duration of a conflict that has already killed thousands.
The veteran right-wing leader was joined by the centrist Benny Gantz, a former defence minister, in the government and war cabinet as both put aside bitter political divisions that have roiled the country and sparked mass protests.
Israel has massed forces, tanks and other heavy armour around Gaza in its retaliatory operation against what Netanyahu labelled “an attack whose savagery… we have not seen since the Holocaust”.
Amid the crisis that has been labelled “Israel’s 9/11”, Netanyahu struck the political deal with Gantz and pledged to freeze for now his government’s flashpoint judicial overhaul plan that has sparked an unprecedented wave of mass protests since the start of the year.
Netanyahu’s extreme-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish allies will remain in government, however.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid has not joined the temporary alliance, although the joint statement said a seat would be “reserved” for him in the war cabinet.
“Israel before anything else,” Gantz wrote in a social media post while the far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote that he “welcomes the unity, now we must win”.
Gantz last served in a Netanyahu administration in 2020-2021 under a rotation agreement that was meant to see him take the helm for the second half of the government’s tenure, but early elections had been called before he was to become prime minister.
Overall, five members of Gantz’s National Unity party will become ministers without portfolio.
Israel appeared to be readying for a possible ground invasion of Gaza, but faces the threat of a multi-front war after also coming under rocket attack from militant groups in neighbouring Lebanon and Syria.
Israel again struck targets Wednesday in southern Lebanon, an area controlled by Hezbollah, an ally of Israel’s arch enemy Iran.
On Wednesday evening, rocket sirens sounded across Israel’s north, and the army said there was a suspected aerial “infiltration” from Lebanon.
Israel has been badly shaken by the deadliest attack since its creation in 1948 and the intelligence failure that allowed more than 1 500 militants to storm through the Gaza security barrier in their coordinated land, air and sea attack on the Jewish Sabbath.
Fear and distrust
Unrest has flared in the occupied West Bank, where protests have been held in solidarity with Gaza and 27 Palestinians have been killed in clashes since Saturday.
“My entire life, I have seen Israel kill us, confiscate our lands and arrest our children,” said Ramallah coffee vendor Farah al-Saadi, 52, who praised the Hamas assault.
Israeli cities have been eerily quiet and tense, with some residents noting a growing sense of fear and distrust between Jews and members of the Arab-Israeli minority.
“Israeli people are scared of the Arabs and the Arabs are scared of the Jews… everybody is scared of each other,” said Ahmed Karkash, a shopkeeper in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Frantic diplomacy has continued as international and regional powers sought to prevent a wider conflagration in the Middle East.
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