(May 3, 2023 / JNS) Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit Party will boycott Wednesday’s scheduled Knesset votes in protest of the government’s “weak response” to an onslaught of rockets from the Gaza Strip.

The nationalist party announced that it would instead convene a special faction meeting in the hard-hit southern city of Sderot, located near the Gaza border.

The boycott leaves the coalition with 58 votes in parliament, still more than the opposition’s 56 mandates.

Three Arab (from Gaza) workers employed on a construction site in Sderot were wounded by a rocket on Tuesday afternoon.

Israel and Palestinian groups in Gaza reached a ceasefire agreement early on Wednesday, following a major conflagration in which terrorists fired more than 100 rockets towards the Jewish state.