Israel's parliament approves national unity government

Israel's parliament approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's emergency unity government on Thursday, including a number of centrist opposition lawmakers, to display its determination to fight the war with Hamas in Gaza. The government, approved after Saturday's attack by the militant Islamist group Hamas that governs the Gaza Strip, underlines the suspension of normal political rules during one of the most serious crises in Israel's history.

"This is a war for our home, it must end with one thing - in total victory, and the crushing and elimination of Hamas," Netanyahu told parliament, calling Oct. 7 "the most horrible day for Jewish people since the Holocaust." Under the agreement, former Defence Minister Benny Gantz and members of his small centrist party will join Netanyahu's coalition, one of the most right-wing governments in Israel's history, which Gantz had previously bitterly opposed.

More than 1,200 Israelis were killed in the attack and more than 100 dragged off into captivity in Gaza with horrific scenes gradually emerging from the accounts of survivors and mobile phone footage. Israel's political landscape had been bitterly split for months over a hotly-contested push by Netanyahu's government to overhaul the judiciary that drove a wedge between the prime minister's religious nationalist supporters and more liberal, secular Israelis.

But the crisis has seen such differences buried ahead of an expected invasion of Gaza by Israeli forces. "We will act, the enemy will hear," Gantz said in parliament after being sworn in.

The leader of the largest opposition party in parliament, former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, refused to join the unity government which includes extreme right-wingers, among them Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. "Netanyahu and Ben Gvir are not the people who will restore the shattered trust of the Israeli people in their government," Lapid said in a televised address. He said his party would not oppose the government, however, and he would offer his support during the security crisis.

While a severe reckoning with the intelligence and military failures that allowed hundreds of Hamas gunmen to break through the sophisticated security barrier around Gaza, both the government and army chiefs said consequences would come later. "The IDF is responsible for defending the country and its citizens, and Saturday morning, in the area around Gaza, we did not live up to it," said Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi. "We will learn, investigate, but now is the time for war."

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