On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has sometimes challenged Netanyahu politically, and replaced him with a minister more loyal to Netanyahu in a major shakeup of Israeli leadership 13 months into their genocide in Gaza.
The often-protested prime minister said that the “trust” between him and Gallant has “cracked” in recent months, as Israel has aggressively expanded its violence in Gaza to the occupied West Bank and Lebanon.
Gallant and Netanyahu both belong to the far right Likud party, but Gallant and Netanyahu have butted heads in the past year over Netanyahu’s approach to the genocide. The prime minister fired Gallant once in March 2023, due to Gallant’s opposition to Netanyahu’s campaign to overhaul Israel’s judiciary, but reinstated him after mass protests. Israeli media have already reported widespread protests in reaction to Tuesday’s firing.
Gallant is a staunch supporter of the genocide and has conducted Israel’s military through its destructive and eliminationist attacks, including its pivot to north Gaza in which Israel appears poised to completely empty the region of all Palestinians through killing, starvation or displacement. The former defense minister is also facing a request for an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for his role in war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
However, Gallant has vocally criticized Netanyahu for some of his decisions throughout the genocide; notably, Gallant was critical of Netanyahu’s ceasefire and hostage deal demand that Israel be allowed indefinite military control over a wide strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt. The demand was seemingly purposefully designed to kill ceasefire talks, and reportedly sparked a heated confrontation between Gallant and Netanyahu in September.
The group representing the families of captives held in Gaza said that Gallant’s firing was another way for Netanyahu to kill a hostage deal. Gallant was a key liaison between the U.S. and Israel amid ceasefire talks; just yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly spoke with him on securing a deal, according to the State Department.
The disagreements between the two seem to have come to a head this week, after Gallant approved a military draft of roughly 7,000 ultra-Orthodox men who offer crucial support to Netanyahu’s governing coalition and for whom Netanyahu sought an exemption from the draft.
Netanyahu picked Foreign Minister Israel Katz to replace Gallant, in what some analysts have said is a show that Netanyahu is feeling politically stable and seeking to solidify his coalition. Katz is a loyalist of Netanyahu’s.
Last October, shortly after Israel’s siege of Gaza began, Katz called for a total blockade of food, water and fuel to Gaza; in August, as Israel began its current escalation in the occupied West Bank, Katz pledged that Israeli forces would expand their tactics in Gaza to the region. Gallant, notably, also called for a total blockade on Gaza early in the genocide.
However, as Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani has pointed out, the ousting of Gallant may actually weaken Netanyahu’s stance internationally. Netanyahu will not have a scapegoat for the military’s failure to achieve objectives in the genocide, while Katz — who Rabbani labelled a “monumentally incompetent and thoroughly pliant windbag” — will serve as a mere puppet for Netanyahu to channel his decisions through.
“It’s never a good look to fire the official in charge of a war effort in the middle of a campaign — even a genocidal one,” said Rabbani. “More importantly, Gallant spent most of his professional career in the security establishment and represented its views and interests around the cabinet table. He was also seen as Washington’s man in the Israeli government. The White House’s favorite war criminal.”
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