Benny Gantz threatens to leave Israel’s government, and other news.


  • Benny Gantz, a centrist member of Israel’s war cabinet, presented Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with an ultimatum on Saturday, saying he would leave the government if it did not soon develop a plan for the future of the war in Gaza. While Mr. Gantz’s departure would not topple the country’s emergency wartime government, it would further strain a fragile coalition that has provided Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right government with a boost of international legitimacy, and it would make the prime minister even more reliant on his hard-line partners. Read the full story here.

  • Al-Aqsa Hospital in Nuseirat in central Gaza on Sunday received the bodies of 30 people killed in overnight Israeli bombardment, according to Khalil al-Daqran, a hospital spokesman. When asked about a strike in Nuseirat, the Israeli military said it was taking “feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”

  • An estimated 800,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah since the start of an Israeli military offensive in the southern Gaza city, according to Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of UNRWA, the U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees. Many of those relocating have already been displaced several times since the start of the war. Before Israel launched its offensive on May 6, more than one million Gazans had been sheltering in Rafah. On Saturday, the Israeli military said its forces were pressing onward in the eastern outskirts of the city.

  • Israeli forces said on Saturday that they had recovered the body of Ron Binyamin, 53, an Israeli man held hostage in Gaza since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7. On the morning of the attack, Mr. Binyamin — a husband and father of two daughters — had set out on a bicycle ride with friends near Be’eri, a small kibbutz near the Gaza border. Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, said Hamas militants killed Mr. Binyamin and took his body back to Gaza, where his remains were retrieved on Thursday night along with those of Yitzhak Gelernter, Shani Louk and Amit Buskila.

  • The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group representing relatives of those captured on Oct. 7 during the Hamas-led attack on Israel, said a rally on Saturday evening in Tel-Aviv drew a crowd of 100,000 people. Ambassadors to Israel from the United States, Britain, Germany and Austria all spoke, pledging to continue their efforts to secure a deal to bring home the hostages.



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