Israel’s hard-line finance minister stormed out of a cabinet meeting on the future of Gaza.

Bezalel Smotrich directly challenged Benjamin Netanyahu to intensify the military operation by flooding the Strip with soldiers, and threatened to collapse the coalition government if he did not.

It comes as the government faces the dilemma of how to allow aid back into Gaza without it falling into Hamas’s hands.

At a meeting of the security cabinet on Tuesday night, Israel Katz, the defence minister, reportedly said that the country had no choice but to allow aid back into the enclave within the next two weeks.

Some ministers believe they will need to allow food into Gaza before supplies run out in order to have a chance at avoiding charges of war crimes at the International Criminal Court.

The idea is strongly opposed by Mr Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, another far-Right minister in Mr Netanyahu’s coalition, who this week called for the bombing of food depots to put Hamas under pressure.

They have characterised the current campaign, which restarted on March 18, as indecisive.