Israel announces national unity government as it tightens Gaza siege

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Israel has formed an emergency war cabinet and unity government as it tightens its siege of the Gaza Strip ahead of an expected ground offensive.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck the deal on Wednesday with Benny Gantz, head of the opposition National Unity party and a former general, in the wake of Saturday’s deadly attack by Hamas.

The agreement came as Gaza lost its electricity supply, leaving residents alarmed that they would soon lose contact with the outside world and as Israel sent tens of thousands of army personnel to the border with the enclave.

Netanyahu and Gantz’s parties said the emergency government would serve for the duration of the war. They added that, while the conflict lasts, no legislation will proceed that does not concern it.

The terms of the deal suggest that the government will put on hold a judicial overhaul that polarised Israeli society and triggered deep divides in the country’s military.

Some opposition figures had demanded that Netanyahu drop hard-right members of his coalition as the price of joining it.

But Netanyahu and Gantz — who co-operated in a shortlived government until it collapsed in acrimony in 2021 — agreed that five members of the opposition leader’s party would join the cabinet without others departing.

The deal is a bid to bypass the rift in Israeli politics ahead of what threatens to be a difficult and lengthy military campaign.

Israel has mobilised 360,000 reservists as it prepares for the widely expected ground operation in Gaza, from which it withdrew in 2005 and which Hamas has controlled since 2007.

“We have sent our infantry, armoured soldiers, our artillery corps and many other soldiers from the reserves,” said Jonathan Conricus, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces. “They are now close to the Gaza Strip, getting ready to execute the mission that they have been given . . . to make sure that Hamas at the end of this war won’t have any military capabilities.”

Israel has cut off electricity, fuel and water to the Hamas-controlled territory and the enclave’s only power station has now run out of fuel, bringing down the mains supply.

“Their local power station has collapsed and there is no electricity in Gaza,” said Israel Katz, energy minister. “We will continue to tighten the siege until the Hamas threat to Israel and the world is removed. What was will not be.”

The UN estimates that nearly 300,000 Palestinians have been displaced within the 40-km strip, with many rushing to UN-run schools and refugee camps to seek shelter from the Israeli bombardment. Its Palestinian relief agency said on Wednesday that so far 11 UN staffers had been killed in air strikes.

Israel said it had hit more than 2,300 “Hamas targets” in the blockaded territory, while more than 4,500 rockets had been fired from Gaza.

Palestinian health authorities say 1,055 people have been killed by the Israeli bombardment of the enclave, which is home to 2.3mn people, since Saturday’s incursion.

The Palestinian Red Crescent added that three Palestinians were killed and nine injured in a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, in a sign of the potential for the tensions to spread.

The death toll in Israel has reached 1,200 and the military said the figure would continue to rise with more discoveries of bodies of civilians killed by the Hamas fighters who breached the Gaza border.

A large but still uncounted number of bodies was discovered on Tuesday in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz that abuts the border with the Gaza Strip and was among the last Israeli locations to be secured. The Israeli military described the site as a “massacre”.

Combined fatalities reported by Israelis and Palestinians now surpass 2,000, not including 1,500 Hamas fighters whose bodies Israel says it has retrieved.

Conricus added that the “dozens” of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza included many people with dual nationalities, including US, UK, French, German and Ukrainian passport holders.

The Israeli army also said it had received the first cargo plane carrying “advanced armaments” from the US “designed to facilitate significant military operations” on Tuesday night.

Washington is sending ammunition and interceptors to replenish the Iron Dome air defence system that Israel relies on to neutralise rocket attacks.

The US has moved a naval carrier strike group, including its largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, from near Italy to the eastern Mediterranean to deter the Iran-backed Hizbollah militant group in Lebanon, and carry out surveillance in support of Israel.

Israel shelled Lebanon for the fourth successive day on Wednesday, exchanging fire with Hizbollah. The IDF says the country is at war on three fronts, since shells from Syria have also landed in Israel.