Gallant calls on internal Likud tribunal to reject bid to boot him from party
Dozens of central committee members, Likud legal adviser accuse former defense minister of assisting their political opponents, demand he be removed from faction’s rolls
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Former defense minister Yoav Gallant slammed efforts to expel him from the Likud party on Wednesday, asking an internal tribunal to reject a petition by dozens of senior members demanding he end his membership in the right-wing faction.
Although he declined to attend personally, Gallant denied the substance of allegations against him and called on the party court through his attorney to “order the rejection of the petitions…with due speed,” the Maariv daily reported.
Dozens of Likud central committee members filed a suit in the party court last year, demanding Gallant’s ouster over his multiple conflicts with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the cabinet. There has been little, if any, public support for Gallant among party lawmakers as he struggles for his political future within Likud.
A ruling on Gallant’s future within the Likud is expected soon, barring any further petitions, according to the Maariv report.
Gallant’s response came weeks after Likud legal adviser Avi Halevi submitted a scathing opinion calling for him to be expelled from the party and barred from running on the party slate in future Knesset elections.
Halevi wrote that during his tenure as defense minister and later as an MK, Gallant publicly opposed Netanyahu on the issue of overhauling the judiciary, stated that he would not support an ultra-Orthodox conscription bill without opposition support, and skipped multiple votes in the Knesset plenum — all of which violated the “duty of trust that a Likud member owes to the movement according to the Likud constitution.”
Moreover, he argued, Gallant’s actions assisted Likud’s political opponents in opposing the policies of the party and the Netanyahu government.
Netanyahu and Gallant frequently clashed after the government took power at the end of 2022, with the prime minister firing him in March 2023 — after he had warned of the security dangers stemming from the national rift over the judicial overhaul — only to reverse the move amid intense public objection.
Last November, Netanyahu fired Gallant from his cabinet for a second and final time, citing a lack of mutual trust during a time of war.
“I made many attempts to bridge these gaps, but they kept getting wider,” Netanyahu said at the time. “They also came to the knowledge of the public in an unacceptable way, and worse than that, they came to the knowledge of the enemy — our enemies enjoyed it and derived a lot of benefit from it.”
In response, Gallant held a press conference in which he argued that the reason for his dismissal was his insistence on the need to draft Haredi men into the IDF, the imperative to bring back the hostages from Gaza, and the need for a state commission of inquiry in the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror onslaught and ensuing war.
Following his dismissal, he was largely absent from numerous votes important to the coalition — including one on a critical budget-related bill, which forced the prime minister to leave his hospital bed post-surgery and come vote in the Knesset to ensure its passage — and on January 1 he announced his resignation from the Knesset.
In an announcement carried live on Israeli television, Gallant attacked the current government for undermining the security of the country even while insisting that he would remain a member of Likud.
“As a member of the Likud movement, I will continue to fight for the movement’s path,” he pledged, indicating this was not the end of his political career and he would likely return to mount a challenge for the party leadership.
According to Hebrew media reports at the time, Gallant’s resignation may have stemmed from an effort to preempt his ouster from the party.
In a post on X in January, Likud MK Avichay Buaron declared that Gallant knew that if he did not resign, “the Likud faction would declare him retired.”
Although he initially refrained from political commentary since leaving office, Gallant subsequently broke his silence in recent days, speaking out against Netanyahu in interviews with various Israeli media outlets.
Gallant accused the prime minister and his cabinet of having delayed a ceasefire deal that would have led to the return of more living hostages and sharply criticized the premier for rejecting a large-scale preemptive strike on the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah during the war’s early stages, maintaining that such an attack could have stymied the escalation of violence on Israel’s northern border.
Responding to Gallant’s post-Knesset interviews, Likud dismissed the former cabinet minister as an inconsequential leftist.
“Gallant is no longer relevant since Prime Minister Netanyahu rejected his demand to stop the war before entering Rafah, before the occupation of [the] Philadelphi [corridor], before the elimination of Haniyeh, Sinwar and Nasrallah and before the beepers – steps that changed the Middle East and led to another release of our hostages,” the party said in a statement.
“We wish Gallant success in the left-wing bloc.”
Asked if Gallant should remain in Likud, MK Tally Gotliv, a longtime critic of the former defense minister, told The Times of Israel earlier this month that Likud voters were unlikely to support him going forward.
“As for the next elections, I don’t believe that Yoav Gallant will run for Likud anyway, and if he does run for Likud, we are a party that has primaries. The voters… know who is suitable for the Likud party and who is not,” she said.
