Israel’s Netanyahu fires Defense Minister Gallant

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shook up Israel’s political landscape by firing Defense Minister Yoav Gallant late this evening, saying “significant gaps” had developed between the two over Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon.

Netanyahu said in a statement that “in the midst of a war, more than ever, full trust is required between the prime minister and the minister of defense.” He said that while he and Gallant had worked well together in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, over time the relationship declined.

“Significant gaps were discovered between myself and Gallant in the management of the campaign,” he said. Netanyahu claimed he tried to bridge the gaps but said “they only grew wider. These divisions even reached public knowledge in an unusual manner and, worse, became known to our enemies, who took pleasure in them and derived substantial benefit from them.”

Netanyahu said that Israel Katz, the current foreign minister, will step in to replace Gallant. “He brings with him an impressive combination of rich experience and executive ability,” Netanyahu said.

After news of his firing broke, Gallant issued his own statement saying that the “security of the State of Israel always was, and will always remain my life’s mission.”

Gallant was born in 1958, the child of a Holocaust survivor. He served in Israel’s Shayetet naval commandos and was a commander of the Gaza Division and Israel’s Southern Command. He began his political career in 2015 as part of the Kulanu party. In 2019 he joined Netanyahu’s Likud party, which has been in power since 2009.

He was construction minister in 2017. At the time he warned, “We need to be ready for a confrontation with Hamas from [the start of] the coming summer. It is a sensitive period, and we need to be alert and to take actions to prevent it.”

The removal of Gallant comes after months of simmering disputes between Netanyahu and the defense minister over the wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Netanyahu and Gallant disagreed over the priorities in the conduct of the war, with Gallant pressing for a hostage deal and seeking to draft ultra-Orthodox Jews who usually have an exemption from service.

Netanyahu’s decision to fire Gallant was met with stinging rebuke from opposition figures and some analysts.

“Firing Gallant in the middle of a war is an act of madness. Netanyahu is selling Israel’s security and the IDF fighters for a disgraceful political survival,” opposition leader Yair Lapid said.

The leader of the Democrats’ party, Yair Golan, a former deputy Chief of Staff of the IDF, called on Israeli to take to the streets and protest the firing of Gallant. Netanyahu’s coalition partners supported the decision.

Ksenia Svetlova, a former member of Knesset and Executive Director of the NGO Ropes, said that a prime minister “that fires a minister of defense when Israel is fighting in [seven] fronts in its bloodiest war since 1948, is dangerous to Israel’s security.” She told Breaking Defense Netanyahu seemed more concerned with his own political survival and appeasing far-right members of his coalition.

Yaakov Katz, author of “Israel vs. Iran: The Shadow War” and a fellow at The Jewish People Policy Institute, told Breaking Defense said that Netanyahu chose to fire Gallant when the US is focused on elections. “It shows he [Netanyahu] is more concerned with how they might react as opposed to how Israelis might respond,” Katz said. He noted that Gallant was the main point of contact for the US administration with Israel during the course of the war.

This is not the first time Netanyahu’s disputes with a defense minister have been at the center of a political crisis. In 2018 then-Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman resigned after he disagreed with the government’s policy on Gaza. At the time Liberman had pressed for action against Hamas, while Netanyahu preferred de-escalating.

This is also not the first time Netanyahu tried to fire Gallant. He previously intended to push Gallant out in the spring of 2023 during the controversy over judicial reform, but there were major protests, and Netanyahu climbed down from the decision. Gallant had criticized the government for trying to pass a judicial reform bill at the time, expressing concern it was dividing the country.

Gallant leaves office as Israel is fighting a war on multiple fronts. Iran has threatened to carry out more direct attacks on Israel in the wake of Israel striking Iran in October, which itself was retaliation for Iran launching 180 at Israeli targets earlier that month.