US' Chuck Schumer, Israel's Benny Gantz call for snap elections in Israel

The influential US Senate majority leader and the main rival of hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have called for snap parliamentary elections in Israel as pressure mounts on Netanyahu from all corners, including protests demanding his ouster and accountability for the October 7 Hamas blitz that took Israeli security agencies by surprise.

"When a leading member of Israel's war cabinet calls for early elections and over 70 percent of the Israeli population agrees according to a major poll, you know it’s the right thing to do," Chuck Schumer wrote on X.

Comments of Schumer, the first Jewish majority leader in the Senate and the highest-ranking Jewish official in the US, came after Israeli War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz called for elections in September.

"We must agree on a date for elections in September, about a year from the war," Gantz said in a televised briefing, according to the media reports. "Setting such a date will allow us to continue the military effort while signalling to the citizens of Israel that we will soon renew their trust in us."

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said a September election is too far away and advocated for a swifter replacement of Netanyahu's regime.

"This government needs to go home as soon as possible so that we can return the hostages, return the evacuees home, defeat Hamas, and make sure that someone takes care of the Israeli middle class," he said.

Netanyahu's far-right Likud party rejected the call.

Schumer previously urged new elections in Israel and harshly criticised the leadership of Netanyahu.

The Democrat leader said he believed Netanyahu had "lost his way" by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.

"Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah," he said last month. "As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me that Netanyahu's coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October 7."

Demonstrations by opponents of Netanyahu have brought together thousands of people in recent weeks and particularly since Saturday, notably in Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem.

Protesters and the relatives of hostages taken on October 7 have called for the resignation of the premier.

According to the latest polls, in the event of early elections, Gantz would be well ahead Netanyahu, whose popularity has been declining since the unprecedented Hamas cross-fence raid.

Genocide in Gaza

Hamas says its October 7 blitz on Israel that surprised its arch-enemy was orchestrated in response to Israeli attacks on Al Aqsa Mosque, illegal settler violence in occupied West Bank and to put Palestine question "back on the table."

The hours-long raid and Israeli military's haphazard reaction resulted in the killings of more than 1,100 people, Israeli officials and local media say.

Palestinian fighters took more than 250 hostages and presently 130 remain in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli army says are dead, some of them killed by indiscriminate Israeli strikes.

Israel has since then killed nearly 33,000 Palestinians — 70 percent of them babies, women and children — and wounded 75,300 amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities. Israel has imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, starving.

The Israeli war has pushed 85 percent of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60 percent of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which has ordered Tel Aviv to do more to prevent starvation crisis in Gaza. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, said recently there were reasonable grounds to believe Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Albanese also addressed allegations that Hamas fighters used rape during their attack on Israel, saying there was an absence of convincing evidence to support the claims.

"What I am very disturbed by was the weaponisation of anything that happened on 7 of October," she said. "Personally, I have not received information. I have read reports that had been written, and I didn't find any convincing evidence."