Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Defense Minister Yoav Gallant Tuesday evening that his term in office was over, after more than a year of war on seven fronts and Netanyahu’s first attempted dismissal of his DM in 2023, a dismissal that Netanyahu was forced to call off in the face of violent demonstrations across the country.
Gallant has been replaced by Foreign Minister Israel Katz. Gideon Saar is expected to become Foreign Minister.
“Unfortunately, even though in the first months of the war there was such trust and very fruitful work, over the past few months this trust has been broken between me and the Minister of Defense,” Netanyahu said. “Significant gaps have emerged between me and Gallant in the running of the war, and these gaps have been accompanied by statements and actions that contradict government and cabinet decisions.”
The most recent clash between the PM and his DM came in late October, over the new conscription law, which according to its many critics, including inside the coalition, maintains the old status quo with a few cosmetic changes, most notably setting annual quotas for Haredi enlistment. Although the proposed quotas will be larger, they would prove very hard to enforce – as was demonstrated the last time the IDF sent enlistment notices to several thousand Haredi young men and the number that showed up was not big enough for a game of dodgeball.
Still, Defense Minister Gallant approved issuing 7,000 additional draft orders for the Haredim starting this week on Monday, embracing the IDF’s recommendation. According to the Defense Minister’s announcement, the increase in orders was intended to meet the army’s recruitment goals. The last time Haredi youths ignored their draft notices, the army issued arrest warrants to 720 of them – but not one of them was arrested.
What the dispute over the Haredi draft was more likely to produce was the collapse of Netanyahu’s coalition government, which was possibly the real goal of Gallant, Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, and IDF Chief Military Advocate Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi.
The Prime Minister said he had made “many attempts to bridge these gaps, but they kept widening. They also came to the attention of the public in an unacceptable way, and worse, they came to the attention of the enemy – our enemies were pleased with this and derived a lot of benefit from it.”
Recently, the IDF released documents showing that Yahya Sinwar was fully aware of the riots in the streets of Tel Aviv over the judicial reform as well as the initial sacking of Gallant, and became convinced that Israeli society was on the brink of collapse and could be defeated easily.
Netanyahu also said that “the crisis of trust that was gradually opening up between me and the Minister of Defense has become common knowledge, and this crisis does not allow for the proper continuation of the management of the campaign.”
In a letter he sent Gallant, Netanyahu wrote that the minister’s term in office would expire within 48 hours.
