Most far-right ministers vote against agreement that halts fighting with Hamas but does not explicitly end the war; Kushner and Witkoff tell cabinet IDF’s ‘bravery’ and Netanyahu’s ‘difficult decisions’ enabled deal
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet voted early Friday morning in favor of a Gaza ceasefire deal that will see hostages freed in exchange for Palestinian security prisoners and a halt to the fighting, despite vocal objections from the premier’s far-right coalition partners.
The Israel Defense Forces will now withdraw to new lines inside the Gaza Strip, after which Hamas has 72 hours in which it is required to release all the hostages, living and dead.
Netanyahu’s office announced the approval of the deal but did not immediately provide a vote tally, although the agreement was opposed by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, Negev, Galilee and National Resilience Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf, and Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Settlements and National Projects Minister Orit Strock of the Religious Zionism party also voted against the deal, although Immigration Minister Ofir Sofer, also a member of the party, voted in favor.
Contrary to several Hebrew media reports, the government did not vote to “end the war” as ultimately envisaged in Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, but rather approved a six-page Hebrew document in accordance with the first phase of Trump’s plan.
Nonetheless, Trump told his own cabinet at the White House as Israel’s ministers were meeting in Jerusalem that “Last night… we ended the war in Gaza.” And the head of the Hamas delegation to the talks in Egypt, Khalil al-Hayya, declared, “We received guarantees from the mediators and the Americans that the war has ended indefinitely.”
Addressing the cabinet, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was “about to achieve” the return of its hostages.
“We’ve fought during these two years to achieve our war aims,” said Netanyahu in English, alongside top White House aides Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. “A central one of these war aims is to return the hostages, all of the hostages, the living and the dead. And we are about to achieve that goal.”
Netanyahu said Israel “couldn’t have achieved it without the extraordinary help of President Trump and his team, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. They worked tirelessly with Ron [Dermer] and his team, our team. And that, and the courage of our soldiers, to enter Gaza, and combine military and diplomatic pressure that isolated Hamas, I think has brought us to this point.”
Witkoff and Kushner helped broker the negotiations over the deal and both attended the cabinet meeting that approved it.
Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, praised Israel’s military performance over the last two years and said that “bringing the hostages home has been a priority for President Trump for a very, very long time, and we’ve all worked very tirelessly to do that.”
“This all would not have been possible without the bravery of the IDF and its soldiers, what they’ve accomplished not just in Gaza, but also what they’ve done in the theater over the last couple of years to eliminate Hezbollah in the north and really degrade them,” he said.
Kushner said that Netanyahu “really did an incredible job with this, and did a great job with the negotiations.”
“You held your lines firm and I think that between you and President Trump, you had a lot of alignment on what the end state should be,” he concludes.
White House special envoy Witkoff, in turn, praised Netanyahu for making “very difficult decisions,” stating that while there were times at which he wished the premier had been “more flexible,” “the truth is that now, looking back, I think we wouldn’t have reached this point if Prime Minister Netanyahu hadn’t acted the way he did.”
‘You can’t make peace with Hamas’
Far-right leaders have been critical of the deal, with Smotrich announcing on Thursday that Religious Zionism would not vote in favor. Speaking with The Times of Israel, a party source said that it remained up in the air whether or not the far-right faction would bolt the government.
Ben Gvir had also announced ahead of the cabinet meeting that Otzma Yehudit would vote against the first phase of the deal, in which Palestinian prisoners would be released in exchange for all 48 Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
Israel is due to release 250 Palestinian security prisoners serving life sentences, plus another 1,700 Gazans imprisoned since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack that launched the war.
Ben Gvir’s party said it would remain in Netanyahu’s coalition for now, but warned that if Hamas is not dismantled, Otzma Yehudit will “bring down the government,” an echo of an earlier threat to bolt if the terror group “continues to exist” after the hostages are freed.
Earlier this year, Ben Gvir’s party quit the coalition for several months to protest the acceptance of a previous hostage release and ceasefire deal.
Ben Gvir’s demand to veto the release of specific Palestinian security prisoners, including convicted terrorists, delayed the security cabinet meeting on the ceasefire deal as well as the subsequent vote of the entire government to ratify the agreement, according to Kan.
The ultranationalist minister sparred with both Kushner and Witkoff, asserting that they would not release terrorists like those being freed under the deal in the United States, the broadcaster reported.
“You can’t make peace with Hamas! They want to murder us,” he said.
In response, Kushner argued that “Hamas is isolated and deterred all over the world,” to which Ben Gvir shot back: “Would you make peace with Hitler? Hamas is Hitler.”
According to Channel 13 news, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir told the cabinet, “we’re world champions in being bitter,” but “this is a great agreement.”
Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism’s departure from the coalition would not automatically bring down Netanyahu’s minority government, which currently holds 60 out of 120 seats in the Knesset.
They could join the opposition in holding a full constructive vote of no confidence, but that would require 61 Knesset members to agree on backing an alternative government to replace the current one, an unlikely scenario.
They could, however, join with the opposition in collecting 61 signatures to submit a “change of circumstances” letter to Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, requesting permission to hold a vote on dissolving the Knesset.
An opposition-backed bill to disperse the Knesset and call early elections failed in June. Under parliamentary rules, because the legislation was defeated, lawmakers have to wait six months to bring another Knesset dissolution bill to a vote.
‘The war will immediately end’
Shortly before the ministerial vote, Kan published a copy of a one-page English agreement signed by Israel (by delegation head Dermer), Hamas and mediating nations earlier on Thursday, that broadly accords with Trump’s overall 20-step peace plan for Gaza. The document is entitled “Implementation Steps for President Trump’s Proposal for a ‘Comprehensive End of Gaza War,’” and details the stages of the agreement, beginning with the American leader’s announcement of “the end to the war in the Gaza Strip, and that the parties have agreed to implement the necessary steps to that end.”
The second step states that “the war will immediately end upon the approval of the Israeli government,” with all military operations coming to a halt.
The third step calls for the “immediate commencement of full entry of humanitarian aid and relief” into the Gaza Strip, while the fourth says that the “IDF will withdraw to lines agreed upon as per map X attached herewith, and this will be completed after President Trump’s announcement and within 24 hours of Israeli government approval.”
In the fifth step, which will take place “within 72 hours of the withdrawal of Israeli forces, all Israeli hostages, living and deceased, held in Gaza, will be released.”
The next subclause states that “as Hamas releases all the hostages, Israel will release in parallel the corresponding number of Palestinian prisoners as per the attached lists,” followed by another subclause declaring “the exchange of hostages and prisoners will be done according to the mechanism agreed upon through the mediators and through the ICRC without any public ceremonies or media coverage.”
The final step listed says that “a task force will be formed of representatives from the United States, Qatar, Egypt, Turkey and other countries to be agreed upon by the parties, to follow up on the implementation with the two sides and coordinate with them.”
Ahead of the government’s meeting to approve the first phase of Trump’s Gaza deal, the Knesset was lit up in red, white and blue, in appreciation of the US president and anticipation of his expected visit. Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana officially invited Trump to speak at the legislative body, following an invitation to do so first conveyed to Trump by Netanyahu when they spoke overnight Wednesday-Thursday, soon after Trump announced that the negotiators had signed off on the first phase of his plan.
