"It is not the outline of my dreams," said National Unity Party head Benny Gantz in a statement to the press on Thursday morning in response to President Isaac Herzog's outline for judicial reform compromise released the previous evening, "but it must be used either as a comprehensive compromise or as the basis to stop [the legislation] and [begin] dialogue. The extremists in the government are tearing us apart from the inside," he said.
Gantz called on Netanyahu to cease the judicial reform process.
"Faced with the possibility of security deterioration on several fronts, there must not be a civil war. We must stop legislation until at least the end of Ramadan," he said.
"We always succeeded because we had a shared story … The coup d'etat is a dangerous threat coming from within us, and it is breaking the shared story," he said.
The former defense minister also called on members of the Likud to speak up, calling them "silent monks."
"Every proposal for compromise was countered by people whose extreme ideology erases the values of the state of Israel and endangers its future as a Jewish, democratic, strong, safe and just state," he said.
"It is still not too late to say – the state of Israel is more important than the politics of fear. The state of Israel needs the politics of Zionism," Gantz said.
He concluded by calling on citizens to set out and protest lawfully.
"Like in the past – the state of Israel will win, its values will win, its citizens will win. Our hope has not ended and we will always endure in our determination to be a free people – and the people are stronger than any government."