On a day when the United States was electing a White House host and Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Galant.
“Unfortunately, although in the first months of the war there was trust and there was very fruitful work, in recent months that trust between me and the defense minister has been shaken,” Netanyahu said. According to him, Galant made decisions and statements that did not agree with the government’s position, and Israel’s enemies capitalized on these differences. Netanyahu’s statement implied that Galant took a fundamentally different approach to the conduct of the war than most cabinet ministers. To replace Galant, who was considered one of the moderate voices in the current far-right-dominated cabinet, Netanyahu appointed Yisrael Katz, until now foreign minister. In turn, Minister without Portfolio Gideon Saar will run Israel’s diplomatic corps.
Galant himself reacted to his resignation by writing via social media that Israel’s security has always been and will always be “the ‘meaning’ of his life.”
Israeli parliamentary opposition leader and head of the Ash Atid party Yair Lapid, as well as a number of opposition organizations, called on citizens to take to the streets over Netanyahu’s decision to fire the defense minister in the midst of a “war on several fronts.” The event was dubbed “Galant Night 2.” The first “Night of Galant” was organized on March 26, 2023, when Netanyahu first attempted to fire the defense minister. Protests took place in the streets of Tel Aviv and other major cities. Violent clashes between police and protesters were reported in Haifa.
In this material Ascolta analyzes the internal political processes in Israel against the background of protracted hostilities and the risk of further escalation of the situation in the region. It also examines the reasons for Yoav Galant’s resignation and analyzes the possible consequences for the war in the Middle East and Israeli domestic politics.
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Who is Galant
Yoav Galant was born on November 8, 1958 in Jaffa, a neighborhood of Tel Aviv, in a family of Polish Jewish immigrants. Named by his father in honor of the military operation “Yoav”, in which he participated during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.
In 1977, Yoav Galant began his military career in the elite unit of the Israeli Naval Intelligence “Shayetet 13”, where he graduated with honors from the officer’s course. In 1982, he left the service and moved to Alaska, where he worked as a logger for two years. In 1984, he returned to the Navy and was appointed deputy captain of a missile boat. In 1986, he was appointed division commander with the rank of lieutenant colonel. From 1994 to 1997, he was in charge of Shayetet 13.
After 1997, he held a number of high-ranking positions in the Land Army. From 2002 to 2010, he served as Military Secretary to the Prime Minister of Israel. From 2005 to 2010, he commanded the Southern Military District, which participated in Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. In 2012, he retired from the reserve and until 2014 served as CEO of a company for the search and development of oil and gas fields.
Galant entered politics in 2015, when he was first elected to the Israeli parliament. For several years he held various positions in the government: minister of construction (2015-2019), minister of aliyah and integration (2019-2020), minister of education (2020-2021) and minister of defense (2022-2024).
After the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, he ordered a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip. Under him, Israel’s military operation in Lebanon against Hezbollah also began.
In May 2024, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan requested an arrest warrant for Yoav Galant and Benjamin Netanyahu on suspicion of “war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Palestinian territory.”
The origins of the conflict
Rumors of contradictions between the prime minister and defense minister began circulating long before the October 7, 2023 massacre by Palestinian Hamas and the subsequent Operation Iron Swords in the Gaza Strip. Both the prime minister and the defense minister represented the Likud party, which won the parliamentary elections in late 2022. “A black cat” ran between them last March when Israel split over Netanyahu’s attempt to limit the powers of the Supreme Court, sparking weekly mass protests against the move, which critics called an attack on democracy.
Galant then threatened Netanyahu with resignation, becoming the only senior ruling coalition official to oppose the government’s judicial reform. In the defense minister’s view, it stimulated protest sentiments in society, including among army reservists. Netanyahu’s plan was to allow the government majority in the Knesset to overturn court decisions and influence the appointment of judges. In addition, critics of the prime minister said, passing judicial reform could help Netanyahu avoid prosecution in an investigation into allegations of his corrupt practices.
Mr. Galant’s dismissal was avoided at the time, but friction between him and Mr. Netanyahu began to surface more frequently in public.
A thorn in Netanyahu’s side
During the more than 13-month-long military operation in Gaza, and then the Lebanon campaign, disagreements over war strategy became insurmountable. Galant was jokingly referred to as a thorn in Netanyahu’s side. And the prime minister was always looking for a suitable excuse to pull this “splinter” out.
The first bell for Galant rang in August of this year, when the media began to circulate information about his possible resignation. Allegedly, this was due to pressure on Netanyahu from his far-right coalition partners, who were dissatisfied with Galant’s moderate position on the war and the post-war organization of Gaza. At the time, the defense minister demanded from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a clear strategy for the war against Hamas. In addition, Galant said he would not agree to the formation of a military government in the enclave, hinting that Netanyahu has no idea what will happen to Gaza after the war. Galant’s position was supported by two former army generals in the Israeli government, Beni Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot.
There was a sharp split in the government between the moderate generals and the extreme right-wing nationalist parties, led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Internal Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. The defense minister had clashed repeatedly with radical members of the government before. Their position on the post-war organization of Gaza was diametrically different from that of Galant and Gantz. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are close to the West Bank settler movement. They reject any involvement in the post-war settlement of Gaza by representatives of the Palestinian Authority, created three decades ago by the Oslo Interim Peace Accord.
Netanyahu has struggled to maintain his fractured coalition and has reiterated that he is sticking to his promise of a total victory on Hamas. And after that, Gaza will be run by some obscure “non-Hamas civilian administration” with Israeli military responsibility. Aside from disbanding Hamas and returning hostages still held by the Islamist movement, Netanyahu has failed to articulate any clear strategic goal for ending a military campaign that has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians and left Israel increasingly isolated. Experts said Galant’s refusal to consider any form of permanent military presence in Gaza was primarily because such a form of post-war arrangement for the enclave could seriously deplete the army and economy, reviving memories of Israel’s decades-long occupation of southern Lebanon in 1982.
As Reuters noted, citing Michael Milstein, a former intelligence officer and one of the leading experts on Hamas, full control of Gaza would require at least four divisions, or about 50,000 troops. The controversy over the issue has so polarized the government that it was one step away from resigning. One of Israel’s opposition leaders, Benny Gantz, announced his resignation from the national unity government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and called for early elections to be organized in the country.
The centrist politician, who has long been at odds with the prime minister, went all-in, choosing to challenge Mr. Netanyahu at perhaps the right-wing cabinet’s most successful moment. The day before Mr. Gantz’s announcement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted a successful operation to free four hostages who had been held since October 7, 2023, by Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. Benjamin Netanyahu held the situation and his coalition of right-wing, far-right and religious parties maintained a majority of 64 votes in the Knesset with the required 61 mandates. Therefore, Beni Gantz’s exit did not bring immediate risks for the prime minister, although it did provoke increased public pressure.
The finishing touches to the resignation
Left in the minority, Yoav Galant, as the only “moderate voice,” in the far-right government, continued to argue with Netanyahu, thus bringing his resignation closer. Bibi hates to be contradicted, especially when it is brought into the public arena.
As Israeli media noted, perhaps the final straw in Galant’s resignation was his decision to send out 7,000 summonses to conscript ultra-Orthodox. The controversy over the conscription of this category of Israeli citizens has been the cause of fierce debate and a sign of the country’s wide social divisions. It is likely that the defense minister’s decision was opposed by two religious parties (the Yahadut ha-Torah bloc), which at the end of 2022 entered into a coalition with the conservative Likud party, whose leader is Prime Minister Netanyahu.
The prime minister’s ultraconservative allies in the ruling coalition have long and consistently favored maintaining the exemption of ultra-Orthodox men from military service. Most likely, in order not to provoke a political crisis and the collapse of the coalition during the war, Netanyahu resigned Galant, who had long bored him, and the occasion was right. It must be said that the decision of the now ex-defense minister was quite legitimate, and he was really guided solely by the interests of the Israel Defense Forces.
The fact is that in June 2024, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu must start conscripting ultra-Orthodox men, known as Haredim, into military service and stop funding yeshivas (the highest Jewish religious school) whose students evade the draft. Haredim is a generic name for various ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. The exemption of their members from military service began at the very beginning of Israel’s existence, when David Ben-Gurion, who served as prime minister, agreed to allow some 400 Haredi students to study in yeshivas and exempt them from the military draft.
The Supreme Court’s decision was motivated by the fact that the failure to enforce the provisions of the Military Service Law creates serious discrimination between those who are obligated to serve and those who are not. Therefore, the Supreme Court advocated equality of Israeli citizens before conscription. Especially since the war with Hamas has revealed a shortage of military manpower and increased the strain on Israel’s economy. And conscription of orthodox Jews could improve the solution to this problem. All men and women over the age of 18, except Haredim, serve in Israel’s army for three years. Orthodox Jews make up more than 13% of Israel’s population (it is about 10 million) and their number is expected to rise to 19% by 2035.
Another interesting feature was that the Haredim issue was also one of the reasons why Netanyahu’s cabinet tried to limit the judiciary for most of 2023 and at the cost of preserving the coalition, and thus him as prime minister.
After his resignation and Galant himself cited the conscription of ultra-Orthodox into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as one of the reasons for his dismissal. “First of all, it is my firm position that every person of draft age must be drafted into the IDF and must defend the State of Israel,” the former defense minister said.
However, there were other reasons for Job Galant’s resignation.
Hostages, the Lebanese factor and the U.S. presidential election.
Although most polls show that Israelis still generally support the war, but this support is declining, and more and more people are prioritizing the return of hostages over the destruction of Hamas.
On Sept. 2, for example, Israel held its largest strike since the Gaza war began last October. The country’s largest labor union federation, the Histadrut, called on Israelis to stop work, demanding that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu immediately make a deal with Hamas and secure the return of hostages. Israeli media estimated that more than 300,000 people participated in the Sept. 2 strike. This event made Benjamin Netanyahu nervous. According to the newspaper “Haaretz”, the office of the head of the government was “seriously concerned” about the protest action. The strike was scheduled to last from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m., but far-right Finance Ministry head Bezalel Smotrich urgently went to court to seek a legal ban on the action. Near noon, the Labor Court in the city of Bat Yam sided with the minister and ordered the strike to end. The head of the government, according to Israeli media, called the protests “a shameful show of support for Hamas,” demonstrating that Netanyahu’s government is not going to make concessions in negotiations with the Palestinians.
Prime Minister Netanyahu said in a meeting with ministers that Israel “must continue its military operations in Gaza” and not withdraw the military from the Philadelphi Corridor (a narrow strip of land on the border between the enclave and Egypt). The issue has been a stumbling block in negotiations with Hamas in the first place. As Israel’s Channel 12 reported, Mr. Netanyahu is convinced that the Philadelphi corridor “feeds Hamas with oxygen,” i.e., weapons. “I will not allow them to rearm and massacre us again. This is not just a diplomatic issue; it is a strategic, existential issue for the State of Israel. If we retreat, we will not be able to go back there – not in 42 days, not in 42 years,” Channel 12 quoted the prime minister as saying.
Gallant, for his part, publicly rejected Netanyahu’s oft-repeated goal of “total victory” over Hamas, saying that Israel’s military success only sets the stage for a diplomatic deal. Galant cited disagreements with Netanyahu over the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip as another reason for his resignation. He said it was possible to achieve this despite the fact that “painful concessions” were required on the Israeli side. In this, his position coincided with the American one. Gallant was sympathetic to White House demands to reduce the scale of destruction in the war zone.
He often had to mediate disputes between President Biden’s administration and Mr. Netanyahu’s government, especially after deep mistrust between the U.S. and Israel began to emerge. Joe Biden increasingly criticized Netanyahu for not doing enough to secure a hostage release deal with the Palestinians In fact, Gallant remained the only official who was trusted in Washington. Incidentally, U.S. officials were quite surprised by Netanyahu’s decision to fire Galant. After all, he was one of the most important channels of communication with the U.S. government through Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. As The Guardian insiders note, the two were trying to rebuild trust in the relationship, especially after Israel surprised the US with the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah.
It is no secret that the military campaign in Lebanon may have contributed to Galant’s resignation. Yoav Galant was not enthusiastic about the opening of the northern front and the prospect of turning Operation “Arrows of the North” into a full-scale ground offensive. The defense minister’s cautious approach was shared by the head of the General Staff, Herzi Halevi. However, such a concept had the same opponents from the right-religious wing of the ruling coalition, who demanded that the army commanders put maximum pressure on the Lebanese Hezbollah group, despite all the risks.
It is therefore no coincidence that they immediately expressed satisfaction with Galant’s resignation. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has repeatedly called for the defense minister’s removal because of softness on the Lebanese track, called Mr. Netanyahu’s personnel decision the right one.
But also the third reason for the resignation, according to Mr. Galant himself, was the need to convene a state commission to investigate the events of Black Saturday, Oct. 7. He said the investigation should begin against both him and Netanyahu, accusing him of not taking responsibility for one of the biggest disasters in Israel’s history. However, Netanyahu responded to this by saying that it was not the time to set up a commission and if one was to be established, it would not be until after the war was over.
Of course, it was a great exaggeration to make a “dove of peace” out of Yoav Galant. Despite his moderation, he supported the war in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, as well as the raids in the occupied West Bank, calling them a “repulse on terrorism.” He called Israel’s enemies “human animals” and ordered a complete blockade of Gaza, banning food and fuel imports. Eventually, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan issued him the same arrest warrant as Netanyahu for possible war crimes. As the war continued, however, he was apparently more willing to end the fighting than Netanyahu, for whom it would have been not only the end of his political career but also possibly criminal prosecution.
In general, as experts note, the initiative to remove the minister is most likely designed to blunt the discontent of the army top brass with the government’s course of action on the northern and southern fronts. And now the Israeli power bloc is frozen in anticipation of new resignations. Among the contenders for losing their posts, local publications name the head of the General Staff, Herzi Halevi, and the head of the General Security Service (Shabak), Ronen Bar. However, Netanyahu is trying to deny these rumors.
Since Israel is involved in a war on several fronts – in the Gaza Strip, with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and possibly with Iran itself – the timing of the dismissal is being criticized in Israel. According to Yair Lapid, head of the parliamentary opposition, “Firing Galant in the middle of a war is madness.”
Another significant moment of Galant’s dismissal on the day of voting in the U.S. looked like a demonstrative gesture addressed to Mr. Biden’s outgoing team. Back on October 13, U.S. Defense Secretary Austin and Secretary of State Blinken sent an ultimatum to the Israeli leadership demanding that it improve humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip, otherwise there would be a risk that U.S. military aid would be cut off. However, the ultimatum’s deadline comes after the US presidential election and there are fears that a Trump victory could simply put a stop to it. Even before the election of Donald Trump as US president and amid the conflict with Joe Biden, Netanyahu was put in the position of “resetting” relations with Washington. Be it with Kamala Harris, who, would continue to support Israel amid deep mistrust and growing criticism over Palestinian deaths, or with the highly unpredictable Donald Trump administration, which has vowed to support Israel to “finish the job.”
So the resignation of Yoav Galant, who had been a liaison with the Biden administration, looked like a kind of signal that the “Biden era” in relations between the two countries is over. And now the new Defense Minister Yisrael Katz, who is a member of the Prime Minister’s Likud party and has a reputation as a “longtime ally” of Mr. Netanyahu, will have to continue to support the strategic partnership with the U.S., and build it taking into account the wishes of the new master of the White House.
The new defense minister himself is “no less of a hawk than Netanyahu, but he is more of a realist and understands perfectly well what can be achieved and what cannot. He also believes that both Hamas and Iran will see Galant’s resignation as a sign of weakness, which could prompt Israel’s enemies to take more aggressive action. However, Netanyahu’s hands are now more free to launch new strong strikes against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran due to the change of power in the US. It is not clear how Tehran’s partners, Moscow and Beijing, will behave under the conditions of the U.S. transition. And this equation with several unknowns puts Netanyahu in a deadlock. Netanyahu therefore faces a major challenge: how to ensure political symphony between the most far-right government since the founding of the state of Israel and the new Donald Trump administration?
On Nov. 6, the Israeli leader took a step in that direction by becoming one of the first world leaders to send congratulations to Mr. Trump on his “historic return to the White House.” After last year’s presidential race, the American politician took great offense at the Israeli prime minister for rushing to congratulate Mr. Biden on his victory. But this year, Mr. Netanyahu managed to reconcile with the Republican: in July, Mr. Trump warmly received the Israeli prime minister at his residence in Mar-a-Lago.
Despite the fact that Trump, bathing in compliments from the results of the presidential election, pathetically declares that he is going to stop wars, the question immediately arises how? The “escalation for de-escalation” option is exactly Trump’s style. And since that is the case, it is likely that Netanyahu will toughen his actions against Israel’s enemies, turning the degree of tension in the Middle East exponentially. And the consequences of such steps may turn out to be so unpredictable that not only the U.S. and Israel, but the whole world may shudder.
