“I really hope the Cabinet has an action plan up its sleeve and that we’re not wasting valuable time,” Agriculture Minister Yair Shamir said in a July 3 interview with Al-Monitor. Minister Shamir lashed out with exceptional harshness at the government’s conduct toward the escalation from the Gaza Strip. Shamir, a member of the Yisrael Beitenu Party, contends that the prime minister and defense minister must push immediate operational decisions through the Security Cabinet, but “meanwhile all I hear is talk. Hours and hours of Cabinet meetings without decisions, and the shooting from Gaza just goes on. I say: 'If you want to shoot, shoot, don’t talk.'”

Shamir, the son of the late Prime Minister and Likud leader Yitzhak Shamir, who was known for his tough stand toward Arab states, expressed frustration by what he described as a lack of decisiveness on the part of government decision-makers. “I say what my father used to say: The sea is the same sea and the Arabs are the same Arabs. So let’s decide whether we want calm in [the southern town of] Sderot or rockets all the time,” he said. “Since the bodies of the kidnapped youths were found, there have already been four Cabinet meetings. We’re talking about hours and hours without a bottom line. It’s time to come out and say what we want, and not to be dragged into a reactive policy, because when you react you always look bad and not like someone who acts rationally.”

The interview with Shamir took place on Thursday afternoon, as the Security Cabinet was meeting for a fourth session to debate the murder of the three Israeli teens and the uptick in rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip onto southern Israel. The day after, a cease-fire with Hamas was announced. Shamir, while touring the shelled town of Sderot and on the background of this decision, told the press that he objected to an agreement with Hamas: "There cannot be an arrangement with Hamas. … We cannot accept a situation where Hamas controls the rhythm of events."

True, during the Cabinet meetings, his party’s leader, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman called for an extensive military operation in Gaza, but his position appears to have been rejected. Most members of the Cabinet reportedly do not support a military operation at this time, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon leading the opponents, backed by Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni.