JERUSALEM, Israel
Amid its war on Gaza, Israel has formed an emergency government under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a move that brings to mind the emergency government during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
Netanyahu held talks with
National Unity Party leader and former Defense Minister Benny Gantz and
opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid as well as the leader of
the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu Party, Avigdor Lieberman, on joining the
government.
The Likud party led by
Netanyahu said in a statement carried Tuesday by the Israeli Broadcasting
Authority that the heads of the coalition unanimously supported the formation
of an emergency government and authorized Netanyahu to work on it.
“The people are united, and
now the leadership must be united. I call on the opposition leaders to form a
national emergency government without preconditions, similar to the one that
was formed with (Prime Minister) Menachem Begin on the eve of the outbreak of
the Six-Day War,” Netanyahu said on Monday.
The Israeli Knesset, or
parliament, says on its website that a national unity government is a
government based on a broad coalition, the members of which also include
representatives of rival parliamentary groups. It says it is formed in
emergency situations (such as war, natural disasters or economic crises), which
requires the mobilization of comprehensive forces in order to confront the
situation.
The Knesset points to the 13th
government headed by Levi Eshkol, the leader of the "Ma'arach" (The
Alignment) party, an electoral alliance of the new Labor Party and Mapam, which
served the term of the sixth Knesset as the most prominent example of an
emergency government.
“On June 1, 1967, Eshkol
included the ‘Rafi’ and ‘Gahal’ blocs in the government coalition and
established a national bloc government. Moshe Dayan, from the ‘Rafi’ party,
joined the government and served as Minister of Defense, while Menachem Begin
and Yosef Sapir, from the ‘Gahal’ party, joined as ministers without
portfolio,” it adds.
According to the Knesset’s
website, “the goal of appointing Dayan to the Ministry of Security on the eve
of the Six-Day War (1967) was to dispel the public’s fears in light of the
threats made by the Arab countries to the existence of the State of Israel,” as
he put it.
The announcement of efforts to
form an emergency government in Israel came after long months of disagreements
between the government and the opposition over a package of “judicial reform”
laws pushed by the government, which the opposition feared “will turn Israel
into a dictatorship.”
In a dramatic escalation of
Middle East tensions, Israeli forces have launched a sustained and forceful
military campaign against the Gaza Strip in response to a military offensive by
the Palestinian group Hamas in Israeli territories.
The conflict began when Hamas
initiated Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against Israel, a multi-pronged surprise
attack including a barrage of rocket launches and infiltrations into Israel via
land, sea and air, which Hamas said was in retaliation for the storming of
Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem and Israeli settlers’ growing
violence against Palestinians.
In response to Hamas' actions,
the Israeli military launched Operation Swords of Iron against Hamas targets
within the Gaza Strip. Israel's response has extended into cutting water and
electricity supplies to Gaza, further worsening the living conditions in an
area that has reeled under a crippling siege since 2007.
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