Benny Gantz’s centrist Blue and White-National Unity party signaled Thursday it was considering rejoining Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as a safety net to ensure a hostage deal moves forward, a day after reports suggested it was weighing the option amid some momentum in negotiations.
Kan news reported Wednesday that the party could join the coalition if Netanyahu agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza, in the event that the far-right parties of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir bolt, as they have threatened to do.
Responding Thursday to a critical opinion piece (Hebrew link) on the Walla news site that accused Gantz of being a “useful idiot” to Netanyahu for considering rejoining the coalition, the party said: “An idiot is someone who hates [Netanyahu] more than they want to bring back the hostages.”
At the same time, party officials have not said explicitly they plan to offer such a safety net.
Responding to the original report, Blue and White-National Unity MK Alon Schuster told Kan, “There are currently no contacts about joining the government, but if we understand that doing so will lead to the release of hostages, then that is what we will do.”
He added, “What do you expect? That we will let the hostages die?�
Gantz’s party joined Netanyahu’s right-wing government following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, and Gantz was one of three voting members of a newly formed war cabinet. But his party left the government in mid-2024 due to growing differences with the prime minister on the direction of the war.
This wasn’t the first time the centrist politician had joined up with the long-serving premier, and not the first time he fell out with him: The two previously formed an emergency unity government in 2020, after three rounds of inconclusive elections amid the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, but the alliance quickly fell apart after Netanyahu was widely seen to have wriggled out of his power-sharing agreement with Gantz.
Gantz’s faction has undergone a string of defections and now controls seven seats in the Knesset while still coordinating with an eighth member who recently left the party. The party’s numbers would not replace the 13 MKs controlled by Smotrich and Ben Gvir, and would not give Netanyahu a majority in the 120-member body.
Netanyahu’s coalition currently holds only 60 of 120 seats in the Knesset, lacking a majority after the United Torah Judaism party quit last month, followed by far-right MK Avi Maoz.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, who leads the Yesh Atid party, has repeatedly said that he would offer Netanyahu a “safety net” for any hostage deal.
Lapid doubled down on Wednesday, saying he has a “24-seat safety net” to offer the premier, more than enough to cover the 13 that would be needed to prop up the coalition if Smotrich’s Religious Zionism and Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit decide to depart.
“He doesn’t even have to give anything in return, just bring them home,” Lapid said, referring to the hostages.
Efforts to reach a ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza have intensified over the past week, as mediators have scrambled to sign a deal before Israel carries out its newly approved mission to conquer Gaza City and displace the million-plus Palestinians that are currently sheltering in the area.
Hamas on Monday said that it had agreed to a deal based on the so-called “Witkoff framework,� which would commit the terror group to release 10 living hostages and the bodies of 18 of the slain hostages, in exchange for a 60-day ceasefire and the release by Israel of hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners, amid talks for a permanent end to the war.
However, Netanyahu has continued to dismiss such efforts, focusing instead on the plan approved by the cabinet earlier this month to intensify fighting in the Gaza Strip, though he has not outright rejected the latest proposal.
Fifty hostages remain held captive in Gaza — 49 of the 251 taken hostage on October 7, 2023, and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014. Israeli officials have declared that 28 of them are dead, while 20 are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others.
In the first ceasefire deal in November 2023, 105 hostages were freed by Hamas, and another 30 were released in another deal in January and February 2025 alongside the bodies of eight slain hostages which were returned to Israel. Five other hostages have been freed outside of these deals, while eight have been rescued by IDF troops and the bodies of 49 captives have been recovered from Gaza throughout the war.