Itamar Ben-Gvir reenters Israel politics as Gaza conflict escalates

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Itamar Ben-Gvir's planned return to Israel's government brings back a West Bank settler who has pressed for an intensification of the war in the Gaza Strip, even as the Palestinian death toll has exceeded 48,000.

The announcement by Ben-Gvir, once a lynchpin of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rightist-religious cabinet, followed airstrikes on Gaza that shattered weeks of relative calm after talks with the Palestinians stalled over a permanent ceasefire.

In January, when he was national security minister, Ben-Gvir resigned from the government over disagreements about the ceasefire. His return strengthens a coalition that had been left with a thin parliamentary majority when he departed.

Ben-Gvir, 48, was known as a hardline extremist even before he helped Netanyahu form the most right-wing coalition in Israel's history. Burly, bespectacled and outspoken, Ben-Gvir heads the pro-settler, nationalist-religious Jewish Power party.

While in the cabinet, he repeatedly attacked the army and Netanyahu over the conduct of the war in Gaza, opposing any deal with Hamas and threatening at times to bring down the government if it did a deal to end the war without destroying Hamas.

Together with a fellow hardliner, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, he has clashed repeatedly with Netanyahu. Both have called for the permanent conquest of Gaza and re-establishment of the Jewish settlements there which Israel abandoned in 2005, notions that Netanyahu has rejected.

INTERNATIONAL OUTRAGE

Ben-Gvir's visit in August to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, just as ceasefire negotiators were preparing another bid to end the fighting in Gaza and halt a spiral into regional war, was one of a series of actions to inflame global outrage. 

The visit, and his declaration that Jews should be allowed to pray there in defiance of decades-old status quo arrangements covering a site holy to both Muslims and Jews, drew condemnation, including in Israel.

Netanyahu quickly disavowed and rebuked Ben-Gvir, whose visit also outraged Orthodox Jews who consider the Temple Mount, revered as the site of Judaism's two ancient temples, too sacred a place for Jews to enter.

For Ben-Gvir, who was photographed brandishing a pistol at Palestinian demonstrators in East Jerusalem during the 2022 Israeli election campaign, the controversy reinforced his status as a firebrand.

A disciple of Meir Kahane, a rabbi who wanted to strip Arab Israelis of citizenship and whose party was ultimately banned from parliament and designated a terrorist organisation by the United States, Ben-Gvir was convicted in Israel in 2007 of racist incitement and support for a group on both the Israeli and U.S. terrorism blacklists.

While Ben-Gvir rejects any talk of an independent Palestinian state, he has toned down his rhetoric over the years, saying he no longer advocates expulsion of all Palestinians, just those he deems traitors or terrorists.

But his appointment in 2022 by Netanyahu as national security minister, with responsibility for the police, was one of the clearest signs the new government would pay little heed to world opinion.

His resignation two months ago weakened the government without toppling it.  

During the Biden presidency, he repeatedly drew the ire of the United States, Israel's most important ally, over his rejection of a political solution with the Palestinians and his support for violent Jewish settlers who attack Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

(Writing by Michael Georgy and Howard Goller; Editing by Daniel Wallis)