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Israel’s Wartime Cabinet Is Rattled by a Dispute between Netanyahu and His Top Political Rival

Israeli Emergency cabinet minister and opposition politician Benny Gantz addresses the press in Kiryat Shmona, Israel November 14, 2023. (Reuters)
Israeli Emergency cabinet minister and opposition politician Benny Gantz addresses the press in Kiryat Shmona, Israel November 14, 2023. (Reuters)
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Israel’s Wartime Cabinet Is Rattled by a Dispute between Netanyahu and His Top Political Rival

Israeli Emergency cabinet minister and opposition politician Benny Gantz addresses the press in Kiryat Shmona, Israel November 14, 2023. (Reuters)
Israeli Emergency cabinet minister and opposition politician Benny Gantz addresses the press in Kiryat Shmona, Israel November 14, 2023. (Reuters)

A top Israeli Cabinet minister headed to Washington on Sunday for talks with US officials, sparking a rebuke from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to an Israeli official, in a sign of widening cracks in Israel's wartime government nearly five months into its war with Hamas.

The trip by Benny Gantz, a centrist political rival who joined Netanyahu’s hard-line government in the early days of the war following Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, comes amid deep disagreements between Netanyahu and President Joe Biden over how to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and create a post-war vision for the enclave.

The US was prompted to airdrop aid into Gaza on Saturday after dozens of Palestinians rushing to grab food from trucks were killed last week. The airdrops circumvent what’s been a prohibitive aid delivery system, which has been hobbled by Israeli restrictions, logistical issues within Gaza as well as the fighting inside the tiny enclave. Aid officials say the airdrops are far less effective than the aid sent via trucks.

US priorities in the region have increasingly been hampered by Netanyahu’s hard-line Cabinet, where ultranationalists dominate. Gantz’s more moderate party at times acts as a counterweight to Netanyahu's far-right allies.

An official from Netanyahu’s Likud party said Gantz’s visit was without authorization from the Israeli leader. The official said Netanyahu had a “tough talk” with Gantz about the trip and told him the country has “just one prime minister.”

An Israeli official said Gantz had informed Netanyahu of his intention to travel to the US and to coordinate messaging with him. The official said the visit is meant to strengthen ties with Washington, to bolster support for Israel's ground campaign and to push for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

Gantz is set to meet with US Vice President Kamala Harris and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, according to his National Unity party.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the dispute with the media.

Netanyahu has tanked in popularity since the war broke out, according to most opinion polls, with many Israelis holding him responsible for Hamas’ cross-border raid that left 1,200 people, mostly civilians, dead and roughly 250 people, including women, children and older adults, abducted and taken into Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.

The subsequent fighting has killed at least 30,410 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters. Around 80% of the population of 2.3 million have fled their homes, and UN agencies say hundreds of thousands are on the brink of famine.

Critics say Netanyahu’s decision-making has been tainted by political considerations, a charge he denies. The criticism is particularly focused on plans for postwar Gaza. Netanyahu has released a proposal that would see Israel maintain open-ended security control over the territory with local Palestinians running civilian affairs.

The US wants to see progress on the creation of a Palestinian state, envisioning a revamped Palestinian leadership running Gaza with an eye toward eventual statehood.

That vision is opposed by Netanyahu and the hard-liners in his government. Another top Cabinet official from Gantz's party has questioned the handling of the war and the country's strategy for freeing the hostages.

Netanyahu's government, Israel's most conservative and religious ever, has also been rattled by a court-ordered deadline for a new bill to broaden military enlistment of ultra-Orthodox Jews, many of whom are exempted to pursue religious studies. The issue has come up as hundreds of Israeli soldiers have been killed since Oct. 7 and the military is looking to fill its ranks as the war drags on.

Gantz, who polls show would earn enough support to become prime minister if a vote were held today, is viewed as a political moderate. But he has remained vague about his view of Palestinian statehood.

A visit to the US, if met with progress on the hostage front, could further boost Gantz’s support. Israel has essentially endorsed a framework of a proposed Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, and it is now up to Hamas to agree to it, a senior US official said Saturday. He spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House to brief reporters.

Israelis, deeply traumatized by Hamas’ attack, have broadly backed the war effort as an act of self-defense, even as global opposition to the fighting has increased.

But a growing number are expressing their dismay with Netanyahu. Some 10,000 people protested late Saturday to call for early elections, according to Israeli media. Such protests have grown in recent weeks, but remain much smaller than last year's demonstrations against the government's judicial overhaul plan.

If the political rifts grow and Gantz quits the government, the floodgates will open to broader protests by a public that was already unhappy with the government when Hamas struck, said Reuven Hazan, a professor of political science at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

“There is a lot of anger,” he said, listing grievances that were building well before Oct. 7. “The moment you have that anger and a coalition that is disconnected from the people, there will be fireworks.”

Netanyahu's government won't collapse if Gantz exits, but it could lose legitimacy in the eyes of much of the public.

Talks aimed at brokering a Gaza ceasefire restarted Sunday in Egypt. International mediators hope to broker a deal that would pause the fighting and free some of the remaining hostages before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins around March 10.

In the meantime, fighting raged on in Gaza with Israeli strikes late Saturday killing more than 30 people, including women and children, according to local health officials.

At least 14 were killed in a strike on a home in the southernmost city of Rafah, on the Egyptian border, according to Dr. Marwan al-Hams, director of the hospital where the bodies were taken. He said the dead, including six children and four women, were all from the same family. Relatives said another nine people were missing under the rubble.

Israeli airstrikes also hit two homes in the Jabaliya refugee camp, a dense, residential area in northern Gaza, killing 17 people, according to the Civil Defense.

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Why Iranian Drones Are Hard to Stop

Protesters hold a mockup of Iranian-made drone Shahed-136, during a rally marking al-Quds Day (Jerusalem Day), amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, March 13, 2026. (EPA)
Protesters hold a mockup of Iranian-made drone Shahed-136, during a rally marking al-Quds Day (Jerusalem Day), amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, March 13, 2026. (EPA)
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Why Iranian Drones Are Hard to Stop

Protesters hold a mockup of Iranian-made drone Shahed-136, during a rally marking al-Quds Day (Jerusalem Day), amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, March 13, 2026. (EPA)
Protesters hold a mockup of Iranian-made drone Shahed-136, during a rally marking al-Quds Day (Jerusalem Day), amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, March 13, 2026. (EPA)

Cheap and deadly, Iranian-designed Shahed drones have inflicted major damage in the Middle East war, and have anti-jamming and other capabilities that make them difficult to stop.

- Offline navigation -

Designed to explode on impact, Shahed drones connect to GPS to register their location shortly before or after takeoff, then typically turn off their receivers, said Thomas Withington, a researcher at Britain's Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

The drones then travel long distances towards their target using gyroscopes that measure their speed, direction and position -- known as an "inertial navigation system".

"GPS is going to get jammed by whatever is protecting the target," Withington told AFP.

"If you look at a map of GPS jamming at the moment in the Middle East, you see that there's a lot of jamming... By not using the GPS, you avoid that."

The drones can then return to GPS just before impact for a more precise strike, or remain offline.

"It's not always necessarily very accurate, but it's as accurate as it needs to be," said Withington.

- Anti-jamming mechanisms -

Russia has been making Shahed-style drones to use in its war in Ukraine.

The US-based Institute for Science and International Security found in 2023 that those drones used "state-of-art antenna interference suppression" to remove enemy jamming signals while preserving the desired GPS signal.

Anti-jamming mechanisms were found in the wreckage of an Iranian-made drone that struck Cyprus in the opening days of the Middle East war, a European industry source told AFP.

"They have put (the Shahed) together using off-the-shelf parts, but it has... many of the capabilities that US military GPS equipment has," Todd Humphreys, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, told AFP.

Defending against them now requires sophisticated electronic warfare equipment.

"The Shaheds have been upgraded," said Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat.

- Stealth materials -

The Shahed is built from "lightweight radar-absorbing materials", such as plastic and fiberglass, a 2023 RUSI paper said.

Their small size and low altitude allow them to slip through aerial defense systems.

- Other positioning systems? -

Some experts think Iran is using multiple positioning systems, making it easier for its drones to dodge jamming.

Serhii Beskrestnov, a technology adviser to the Ukrainian defense ministry, said Iran is using the BeiDou system, a Chinese rival to the US-developed GPS.

And the Russia-made version of Shaheds uses both BeiDou and the Russian equivalent, GLONASS, he said.

Others suspect Iran may be using LORAN, a radio navigation system developed during World War II.

LORAN, which does not require satellites, largely fell out of use when GPS emerged.

But Iran said in 2016 it was reviving the technology, which requires a network of large ground-based transmitters, though experts have not confirmed it is active today.

- Counter-strategies -

Militaries have mainly defended against Shaheds by shooting them down with cannon fire, missiles and interceptor drones, with the United States and Israel also developing lasers.

But jamming can work, as Ukraine has shown, as can "spoofing", which involves hacking into the drone's navigation system to change its destination.

Ukraine used electronic warfare to neutralize 4,652 attack drones from mid-May to mid-July 2025 -- not far off the number it shot down in the same period, 6,041, according to AFP analysis of Ukrainian military data.

Its experts insist that electronic and conventional defenses are often used in tandem against the drones.

Features

How Poland Went from Post-Communist Wreck to One of the World's 20 Biggest Economies

FILE - Newer skyscrapers flank the communist-era Palace of Culture and Science, foreground, in n, Poland, May 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz, File)
FILE - Newer skyscrapers flank the communist-era Palace of Culture and Science, foreground, in n, Poland, May 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz, File)
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How Poland Went from Post-Communist Wreck to One of the World's 20 Biggest Economies

FILE - Newer skyscrapers flank the communist-era Palace of Culture and Science, foreground, in n, Poland, May 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz, File)
FILE - Newer skyscrapers flank the communist-era Palace of Culture and Science, foreground, in n, Poland, May 25, 2018. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz, File)

A generation ago, Poland rationed sugar and flour while its citizens were paid one-tenth what West Germans earned. Today its economy has edged past Switzerland to become the world’s 20th largest with over $1 trillion in annual output.

It’s a historic leap from the post-Communist ruins of 1989-90 to today's European growth champion that economists say has lessons on how to bring prosperity to ordinary people — and that the Trump administration says should be recognized by Poland's presence at a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies later this year.

The transformation is reflected in people like Joanna Kowalska, an engineer from Poznan, a town of half a million people midway between Berlin and Warsaw. She returned home after five years in the US.

“I get asked often if I’m missing something by coming back to Poland, and, to be honest, I feel it’s the other way around,” Kowalska said. “We are ahead of the United States in so many areas.”

Kowalska works at the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, which is developing the first artificial intelligence factory in Poland and integrating it with a quantum computer, one of 10 on the continent financed by a European Union program.

Kowalska worked for Microsoft in the US after graduating from the Poznan University of Technology in a job she saw as a “dream come true.”

But she missed having a “sense of mission," she said.

“Especially when it comes to artificial intelligence, the technology started developing so rapidly in Poland,” Kowalska added. “So it was very tempting to come back.”

Multiple factors in breaking out of poverty

The guest invitation to the G20 summit is mostly symbolic; no guest country has been promoted to full member since the original G20 met at the finance minister level in 1999, and that would take a consensus decision of all the members. Moreover, the original countries were chosen not just by GDP rank, but by their “systemic significance” in the global economy.

But the gesture reflects a statistical truth: In 35 years — a little less than one person's working lifetime — Poland’s per capita gross domestic product rose to $55,340 in 2025, or 85% of the EU average. That's up from $6,730 in 1990, or 38% of the EU average and now roughly equal to Japan’s $52,039, according to International Monetary Fund figures measured in today's dollars and adjusted for Poland’s lower cost of living.

Poland’s economy has grown an average 3.8% a year since joining the EU in 2004, easily beating the European average of 1.8%.

It wasn't simply one factor that helped Poland break out of the poverty trap, says Marcin Piątkowski of Warsaw’s Kozminski University and author of a book on the country’s economic rise.

One of the most important factors was rapidly building a strong institutional framework for business, he said. That included independent courts, an anti-monopoly agency to ensure fair competition, and strong regulation to keep troubled banks from choking off credit.

As a result, the economy wasn’t hijacked by corrupt practices and oligarchs, as happened elsewhere in the post-Communist world.

Poland also benefited from billions of euros in EU aid, both before and after it joined the bloc in 2004 and gained access to its huge single market.

Above all, there was the broad consensus, from across the country's political spectrum, that Poland’s long-term goal was joining the EU.

“Poles knew where they were going,” Piątkowski said. “Poland downloaded the institutions and the rules of the game, and even some cultural norms that the West spent 500 years developing.”

As oppressive as it was, communism contributed by breaking down old social barriers and opening higher education to factory and farmworkers who had no chance before. A post-Communist boom in higher education means half of young people now have degrees.

“Young Poles are, for instance, better educated than young Germans,” Piatkowski said, but earn half what Germans do. That’s “an unbeatable combination” for attracting investors, he said.

An electric bus ride to success Solaris, a company founded in 1996 in Poznan by Krzysztof Olszewski, is one of the leading manufacturers of electric buses in Europe with a market share of around 15%. Its story shows one hallmark of Poland’s success: entrepreneurship, or the willingness to take risks and build something new.

Educated as an engineer under the Communist government, Olszewski opened a car repair shop where he used spare parts from West Germany to fix Polish cars. While most enterprises were nationalized, authorities gave permission to small-scale private workshops like his to operate, according to Katarzyna Szarzec, an economist at the Poznan University of Economics and Business. “These were enclaves of private entrepreneurship," she said.

In 1996, Olszewski opened a subsidiary of the German bus company Neoplan and started producing for the Polish market.

“Poland’s entry to the EU in 2004 gave us credibility and access to a vast, open European market with the free movement of goods, services and people,” said Mateusz Figaszewski, responsible for institutional relations.

Then came a risky decision to start producing electric buses in 2011, a time when few in Europe were experimenting with the technology. Figaszewski said larger companies in the West had more to lose if switching to electric vehicles didn't work out. "It became an opportunity to achieve technological leadership ahead of the market," he said.

An aging population is still a challenge

Challenges still remain for Poland. Due to a low birth rate and an aging society, fewer workers will be able to support retirees. Average wages are lower than the EU average. While small and medium enterprises flourish, few have become global brands.

Poznan Mayor Jacek Jaśkowiak sees domestic innovation as a third wave in Poland’s postsocialist economic development. In the first wave, foreign countries opened factories in Poland in the early 1990s, taking advantage of a skilled local population.

Around the turn of the millennium, he said, Western companies brought more advanced branches, including finance, IT and engineering.

“Now it’s the time to start such sophisticated activities here,” Jaśkowiak says, adding that one of his main priorities is investing in universities.

“There is still much to do when it comes to innovation and technological progress,” added Szarzec, the Poznan economist. “But we keep climbing up on that ladder of added value. We're no longer just a supplier of spare parts.”

Szarzec's students say more needs to be done to reduce urban-rural inequalities, make housing affordable and support young people starting families. They say Poles need to acknowledge that immigrants, such as the millions of Ukrainians who fled the Russian invasion in 2022, contribute to economic development in an aging population.

"Poland has such a dynamic economy, with so many opportunities for development, that of course I am staying," said Kazimierz Falak, 27, one of Szarzec's graduate students. “Poland is promising.”

Features

After Attacks on Iran’s Oil Facilities, Toxic Black Rain Endangers the Public

This video grab taken from UGC images posted on social media on March 7 and 8, 2026 shows fire erupting at an oil depot in Iran's capital Tehran. (UGC / AFP)
This video grab taken from UGC images posted on social media on March 7 and 8, 2026 shows fire erupting at an oil depot in Iran's capital Tehran. (UGC / AFP)
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After Attacks on Iran’s Oil Facilities, Toxic Black Rain Endangers the Public

This video grab taken from UGC images posted on social media on March 7 and 8, 2026 shows fire erupting at an oil depot in Iran's capital Tehran. (UGC / AFP)
This video grab taken from UGC images posted on social media on March 7 and 8, 2026 shows fire erupting at an oil depot in Iran's capital Tehran. (UGC / AFP)

Clouds of toxic smoke unleashed into the atmosphere by US-Israeli airstrikes on Iranian oil facilities made a dangerous return to Earth in the form of “black rain,” prompting international health officials to warn of serious risks to the public.

Residents in Tehran complained last week of burning eyes and difficulty breathing when the dark and oily precipitation fell near the Iranian capital after several fuel oil depots and a refinery were struck.

Plumes of dark smoke have also been seen across other parts of the region over two weeks of war, as Iran retaliates against US-Israeli airstrikes by firing drones and missiles at the oil and natural gas facilities of its Gulf neighbors.

Rain washes hazardous chemicals out of the atmosphere in a relatively short period of time, experts said, but people exposed to black rain should take precautions to avoid short- and long-term health risks.

Here's what to know:

What is black rain? It occurs when soot, ash and toxic chemicals combine with water droplets in the atmosphere, then fall back to Earth when it rains. It's common after oil refineries or oil fields catch fire, and also can be caused by wildfires, volcanic eruptions and industrial pollution.

In Iran, microscopic soot formed when hydrocarbons in the fuel oil burned incompletely, experts said. Burning oil also forms compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, as well as toxic gases such as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which cause acid rain, said Peter Adams, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

What are the health risks of exposure? Microscopic soot, whose particles are about 40 times smaller than the width of a human hair, can lodge deep in the lungs and enter the bloodstream, causing breathing and heart problems that can lead to premature death, experts said. Exposure to PAHs can increase cancer risk.

In Iran, the World Health Organization and the country's health and environmental officials advised people to stay indoors and wear masks. They warned that the rainfall was highly acidic and could burn the skin and cause lung damage.

“We can definitely expect acute health effects from an event like this,” said V. Faye McNeill, a chemical engineering professor at Columbia University who specializes in atmospheric chemistry.

Even regular air pollution events can trigger health problems and lead to more hospitalizations, especially among the elderly, children and people who already had health problems, she said. “But this is a higher level, so there likely are health problems going on right now because of it.”

Some Iranians fear the polluted rain, which also contains heavy metals, could contaminate drinking-water reservoirs and waterways.

How long do the chemicals last in the atmosphere? It usually takes only hours for fuel tanks to burn out. But — as happened in Kuwait during the Gulf War 25 years ago — oil fields can burn for months, said Adams.

For fires that burn out more quickly, most of the soot and chemicals will disperse on the wind and wash out of the atmosphere in about three to seven days, Adams said.

“So if we don’t create more problems, at least what’s in the atmosphere is going to go away,” even if long-term health risks haven't, Adams said.

“But we don’t know what’s going to happen with future strikes and whether other tanks will be struck or whether oil fields will be struck,” he added. “I'm less concerned about longer-term or regional stuff, but it's a real mess for the people in the immediate vicinity.”