Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich signaled Sunday night that he’ll keep his Religious Zionism party in the coalition, despite disagreeing with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to ramp up humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The finance minister sent a message to his party’s lawmakers portraying the increase in aid as a tactical step ahead of a broader military campaign against Hamas.

Smotrich said the most important question was whether the government is committed to “defeating Hamas.”

“In war, it isn’t right to weigh political considerations,” he added. “We’re advancing a good strategic step — I don’t want to elaborate on it. Within a short time, we’ll know if it will succeed and where we go next.”

The message appeared to calm a political storm that had been brewing since Saturday, when Netanyahu took a series of steps to significantly increase the flow of aid into Gaza over the objections of Smotrich and another senior far-right Netanyahu ally, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. Reports of starvation, and deaths from severe malnutrition, have surged in the enclave, raising international pressure on Israel to allow in more supplies.

Israel denied responsibility for the acute hunger in Gaza. But since Saturday, it has opened up new delivery routes for aid, airdropped supplies into the Strip, and instituted 10-hour “humanitarian pauses” in population centers.

Smotrich and Ben Gvir have, throughout the war, rejected such measures, casting them as a lifeline to Hamas, which Israel has accused of stealing aid. When Netanyahu convened a small group of ministers on Saturday to sketch out the new policy, he did not invite Ben Gvir and Smotrich, claiming that he did not want to disturb their observance of Shabbat.

“I am available throughout Shabbat, 24/7, because I am the national security minister and receive updates all the time. These are just excuses,” Ben Gvir declared in a statement, calling the decision “a big mistake.”

While Ben Gvir railed against the increased aid, calling it “shameful” and a “surrender” to Hamas, Smotrich kept mum, prompting speculation that he could leave the coalition over the matter.

Netanyahu’s coalition recently lost United Torah Judaism, an ultra-Orthodox party. The Shas party also left the government, although it remains a member of the coalition. With the subsequent departure of Avi Maoz, the Noam faction’s sole MK, the coalition retains only 60 out of 120 seats in the Knesset.

As such, the departure of either Smotrich’s Religious Zionism or Ben Gvir’s faction, Otzma Yehudit, would leave the prime minister with a significant minority in the Knesset, which has just begun a nearly three-month recess.

Ben Gvir, who has been pushing Smotrich to join him in a united bloc in order to pressure Netanyahu on the conduct of the war, has already shown that he is willing to quit the government over its conduct in Gaza, having left in January after a ceasefire agreement was signed between Israel and Hamas.

The ultranationalist party returned to the coalition when fighting resumed some two months later.

Netanyahu is already running the country through a minority government and it is unlikely in the extreme that Ben Gvir and Smotrich would agree with the opposition on an alternative government in the framework of a vote of no confidence — although voting in favor of dissolving the Knesset remains a theoretical possibility.

Smotrich has previously threatened to collapse the government if Israel agrees to any deal that would leave Hamas in power in Gaza.

Israel recently conducted weeks of indirect negotiations with Hamas in Qatar over a ceasefire and hostage release deal, but the talks broke down without an agreement. Smotrich has repeatedly said that if Israel ends the war without defeating Hamas, his party will leave the coalition. He and Ben Gvir have called for Israel to take over and resettle the Gaza Strip.

Following the failed round of talks, Ben Gvir also said that now was the time for an intensified fight against Hamas, especially after US President Donald Trump blamed the terror group for the negotiations coming to a standstill.

“We now have an opportunity to take it to Hamas, Trump is also with us, we can’t pass this up again,” Ben Gvir said in a radio interview. “We now have an opportunity to occupy all of the Gaza Strip, to encourage voluntary migration and to take down as many Hamasniks as possible.”