Smotrich: Deal 'bad for Israel and for the entire free world'

Israel vows to stay in south Lebanon; if Iran strikes, we’ll hit it ‘with full force’

Government ministers slam deal between US and Iran to end war, say Israel not bound by terms of the agreement; opposition accuses Netanyahu of failing the Israeli public

Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed Monday that the Israeli military will remain in southern Lebanon and warned that if Iran strikes, it will be hit “with full force,” promising that Israel will resist any pressure after the US and Iran agreed a deal to end the war that also reportedly includes a commitment to end hostilities in Lebanon.

There was no immediate comment on the deal from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but far-right members of his coalition said Israel would not be bound by the terms of the agreement, while members of the opposition accused the premier of failing Israel’s citizens and betraying the armed forces.

US and Iranian officials said early Monday that they had agreed on a framework for an agreement to end the war, which is expected to halt the US blockade of Iranian ports, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and begin 60 days of talks on Tehran’s nuclear program. According to Iranian and Pakistani sources, the agreement also includes a ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese terror group backed by Iran.

Israel, despite having started the war alongside the US, was not involved in the negotiations over the deal, which appears not to achieve the goals of the war that were set out by the US and Israel, including eliminating Iran’s nuclear program, depleting its ballistic missile stockpile, ending its support for terror proxies and creating the conditions for the fall of the regime.

Israeli military action in Lebanon needs to be completely halted and the US bears responsibility for implementing the framework deal on ending the war, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told his Turkish, Iraqi and Egyptian counterparts on Monday in separate calls, according to his Telegram account.

However, Katz insisted that Israel will not withdraw from southern Lebanon, where it is battling the Iran-backed Hezbollah “despite all the existing pressures and those that will still come.”

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I are leading a clear policy that determines that the IDF will remain in the security zones in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, without any time limit, to protect the border and Israeli communities from there against jihadist elements,” Katz said in a statement.

He said the security zones will be “cleared of local residents, and all terror infrastructure, above and below ground, including the houses in the contact-line villages that served as terror outposts, will be destroyed.”

“We will not compromise on Israel’s security interests and the protection of our citizens, and we will not withdraw from the security zones,” Katz said, warning that “if Iran attacks Israel because of the events in Lebanon, we will strike it with full force.”

Iran last week fired missiles at Israel after the IDF hit targets in Beirut and threatened to do so again on Sunday, before apparently being pressured by the US to hold off amid the finalizing of the agreement.

News of the agreement was met with angry reactions in Israel on Monday morning.

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir attacked the deal, saying in a statement that “Trump’s agreement does not bind us.”

“Israel is not subordinate to the United States. We are an independent and sovereign country,” he said. “We are not partners to this agreement, which does not safeguard our security. We must not withdraw from any territory [in Lebanon] that our fighters have captured.”

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the agreement was “bad for Israel and for the entire free world. Period.”

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who heads the Together alliance and is seen as as leading contender to replace Netanyahu in the upcoming elections, said the government failed to translate Israel’s military achievements into lasting security gains.

“During the war with Iran, we saw the extraordinary performance of the IDF and security forces on the front lines, and the courage of the Israeli public on the home front. This morning, we learned that the government is once again incapable of turning all of that into lasting security achievements,” he said.

Calling the deal not “a decree of fate” but the product of failed Israeli leadership, Bennett argued that the government has dragged Israel into wars of “stagnation and attrition” and is “incapable of achieving a decisive victory.”

Bennett said that he, by contrast, has “a strategic plan for bringing about the collapse of the Iranian regime” and to dismantle its nuclear program through “a combination of diplomatic, intelligence, economic, technological and military means.”

Avigdor Liberman, of the hawkish Yisrael Beytenu party, argued that if the pending agreement had been signed during the previous Bennett-Lapid government, Netanyahu “would have accused us of treason.”

Accusing Netanyahu of leading Israel to a “diplomatic disaster much worse than Obama’s agreement” with Tehran in 2015, Liberman told reporters ahead of his weekly faction meeting in the Knesset that Israel “must inform the US that we do not accept any linkage, any connection, between the Iranian arena and the Lebanese arena.”

Jerusalem must be prepared to retaliate against Hezbollah and Iranian attacks, he insisted, asserting that “for every Iranian launch at Israel, we should respond by destroying Kharg Island and the port of Bandar Abbas.”

Liberman also called for the creation of an Israeli missile force and insisted that “from now on, Mossad must focus on one mission only — overthrowing the ayatollah regime.”

Gadi Eisenkot, the leader of Yashar and another rival of Netanyahu in the upcoming election, noted that “the prime minister refuses to look the public in the eye and answer piercing questions with honesty and truth. Once again, Israeli citizens learn about the deal through reports from foreign leaders.”

Eisenkot said the agreement is “far from Israel’s interests.”

“The residents of the north, who were abandoned for two and a half years, discover this morning that their homes and security remain exposed to threat and that once again their cries were not heard in Jerusalem. We will not leave them on their own,” he said.

The left-wing Democrats party chief Yair Golan said the agreement was bad for Israel and cancelled out all of the IDF’s military achievements.

“Tremendous military achievements won through the courage of our pilots and the blood of our fighters were erased, while Netanyahu stood aside — weak, ill, isolated, and lacking influence,” he said on X.

Golan, a former deputy chief of the IDF, called the agreement “the culmination of many years of failure,” with Netanyahu, “the man who promised ‘total victory,'” potentially ending his tenure “with Israel’s enemies stronger, Israel weaker, and the deterrence built with the blood of our fighters eroding before our eyes.”

“Netanyahu is good for Hamas. Netanyahu is good for Iran. Netanyahu is good for Hezbollah. Netanyahu is not good for Israel,” said Golan.

Blue and White chair Benny Gantz, a former defense minister and IDF chief, said the deal was a “strategic failure,” and it was “forbidden to agree to restrict Israel’s freedom of action in Lebanon or to a withdrawal that endangers the residents of the north.”

Yesh Atid MK Ram Ben Barak said the agreement was “the best thing that has happened to Iran in a generation,” while Hadash-Ta’al MK Ahmad Tibi noted that Trump’s “greatest achievement is to open the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before the war began!”

The deal, set to be signed on Friday in Switzerland, will formally put an end to the war launched in late February by the US and Israel against the Iranian regime, which subsequently spread across the Middle East.

The announcement of the deal followed a spike in regional tensions that raised fears of resumed Iranian missile fire on Israel. On Sunday, Israel fired on Beirut in response to Hezbollah attacks on northern Israel. That, in turn, reportedly sparked concern that Iran would retaliate, as it did last week after a previous Israeli strike on Beirut.

Trump criticized the Israeli strike on Beirut while the negotiations with Iran were in their final stages, and told Axios that Netanyahu “has no fucking judgment.”

After the deal was announced, he criticized Netanyahu to The New York Times, claiming that Israel should be grateful to the United States.

“He’s a very difficult guy,” Trump told the Times regarding Netanyahu, “and to be honest with you, he should be very thankful to us for doing this. Because if Iran had a nuclear weapon, Israel wouldn’t be around for two hours.”