Itamar Ben Gvir reenters Israel politics as Gaza conflict escalates

JERUSALEM - Itamar Ben-Gvirs planned return to Israels 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 Netanyahus 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 Israels 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-Gvirs 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