National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir reportedly reached out Wednesday to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to request that the two senior far-right ministers form a united bloc within the government against the emerging ceasefire deal in Gaza being pushed by the Trump administration.

According to Hebrew language media reports, the two — who lead the Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism parties, respectively — were said to be mulling a meeting to discuss coordinating their opposition to the American initiative.

However, in a statement to the press sent via Smotrich’s spokesman, the finance minister denied any such cooperation and instead accused Ben Gvir of playing “a game” with leaks to the media.

The notion of the ministers preventing a hostage deal drew outrage from opposition leaders, who promised to give the government a majority in the Knesset for any such agreement, and families of hostages who said their alleged behavior was a “disgrace.”

The Kan public broadcaster quoted Ben Gvir as explaining he wanted Smotrich’s help as he alone “cannot halt this process, but together they have enough votes [in parliament] against the deal.”

The two parties together have 13 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, where the ruling coalition fields a slim majority with just 61 lawmakers. Though the cabinet would not need Knesset approval for a hostage deal and can authorize one even against the wishes of Ben Gvir and Smotrich, the two parties could threaten to hamper coalition legislative action in parliament if they don’t get their way.

A source close to Smotrich denied he was coordinating with Ben Gvir, telling the media, “There is no approach [to Smotrich] from Ben Gvir; there is a briefing by Ben Gvir to the media about a meeting that was not set.”

“The issue of victory in Gaza is too significant and the lives of the hostages are too precious to play a game of briefings to the media,” the source said. “The finance minister has been working on this issue with full force and seriousness for quite some time now.”

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar in a post to X said, “There is a large majority in the government and also the public for the framework to release the hostages. If there is a chance to do that, we must not miss it!”

Responding to Sa’ar, Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli, who is a member of Netanyahu’s own Likud party, wrote that the framework has not yet been presented to the government.

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid offered Netanyahu opposition support for a ceasefire that would outweigh the loss of Ben Gvir and Smotrich.

In place of Ben Gvir and Smotrich’s 13 votes in the Knesset, “you have 23 votes from me as a safety net for the hostage deal,” Lapid said in a statement. “We need to bring everyone home now.”

Democratsparty chairman Yair Golan tweeted that Smotrich and Ben Gvir were a “pair of failed Kahanists” whose actions show that they are “neither Zionist nor worthy of sitting around the government table,” a reference to the banned ultra-nationalist Rabbi Meir Kahane, of whom Ben Gvir was a disciple, and who was assassinated in New York in 1990.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the largest group representing families of captives, said in response to the reports that the religiously Orthodox Smotrich and Ben Gvir “have forgotten what it means to be Jews, and the significance of the values of mutual friendship and responsibility on which the State of Israel was founded.”

“We have no other word for them this morning than ‘disgrace,'” it said.

Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is held hostage in Gaza, appealed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to align himself with the pair of “wretched” ministers in preventing a deal.

She also noted that the prime minister himself recently assured her that he does not need Ben Gvir and Smotrich to approve a hostage deal, as he has broad support for such a move even without them.

On Tuesday evening, US President Donald Trump announced that Israel had agreed to the necessary conditions to finalize a 60-day ceasefire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“We will work with all parties to end the war” during the prospective two-month truce, Trump said in a Truth Social post, summarizing the development that came out of meetings top US officials held on Tuesday in Washington with visiting Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer.

Netanyahu is scheduled to visit the White House next week, and Trump has said that he will be “very firm” with the prime minister on the need to end the war in Gaza.

Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party quit the government in January to protest a previous ceasefire/hostage release deal, only returning in March with the resumption of hostilities. Smotrich kept his Religious Zionism party in the coalition for the ceasefire but conditioned his staying in on the resumption of fighting against Hamas rather than using the truce period to negotiate a final end to the war, as was originally stated in the agreement. The ceasefire collapsed in March when Israel renewed attacks on Hamas while accusing the terror group of violating the terms. Dozens of hostages, dead and alive, were released during the ceasefire.

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 50 hostages, including 49 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023, during their devastating invasion of southern Israel that also killed 1,200 people and triggered the war. They include the bodies of at least 28 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive, and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.