Gallant calls on Likud to reject path of Ben Gvir as party meets to expel him

Former defense minister Yoav Gallant was combative Monday as he appeared before a Likud tribunal in Tel Aviv to respond to a petition to expel him from the party.

“Make no mistake — the discussion today is not about the future of Yoav Gallant. Today’s discussion is about whether we are continuing the path of Begin or the path of Ben Gvir,” Gallant told the Kan public broadcaster before entering the building, referring, respectively, to Likud founder former prime minister Menachem Begin, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who leads the far-right Otzma Yehudit party.

Under Begin, Likud was founded as a hawkish but staunchly liberal party.

“I continue to hold the same positions and principles I have held all my life, and especially as a wartime defense minister,” Gallant said. “I am a member of Likud, and I came to fight for Likud.”

The petition to expel Gallant was filed about a year ago by activists associated with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, led by Talia Einhorn, whose son Yisrael Einhorn is a former Netanyahu aide implicated in the so-called Qatargate scandal.

The petition claims that as defense minister, Gallant “acted against the Likud party and undermined the leadership of the prime minister.”

Netanyahu and Gallant frequently clashed since 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 government’s judicial overhaul agenda — only to reverse the move amid intense public objection.

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.

Gallant ultimately resigned from the Knesset in January, several months after Netanyahu fired him from his cabinet for the second and final time in late 2024.

Explaining his decision to terminate Gallant, Netanyahu cited what he said was a lack of mutual trust during a time of war. However, the former defense minister has 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 into the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror onslaught and ensuing war.

In a leaked recording published in June, Netanyahu could be heard telling a senior rabbi that he had ousted both Gallant and former IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen Herzi Halevi to enable his coalition to advance a law exempting ultra-Orthodox men from military service.

Following his resignation, Gallant continued to publicly criticize Netanyahu, telling the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper in February that the prime minister had delayed a hostage deal and rejected a large-scale preemptive strike on the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah during the war’s early stages.

In a scathing opinion submitted to the party’s highest internal court in February, Likud legal adviser Avi Halevi called for Gallant’s expulsion from the party, stating that it was necessary to bar him from running on the party slate in future Knesset elections because his actions as a lawmaker and minister had allegedly assisted Likud’s political opponents in opposing the policies of the party and the Netanyahu government.

Halevi specifically pointed to Gallant’s position on Haredi conscription and his decision to skip multiple votes in the Knesset plenum, both of which he asserted had violated the “duty of trust that a Likud member owes to the movement according to the Likud constitution.”

Gallant subsequently called on the party court to reject the motion against him, although he declined to defend himself in person.

Finally showing up before the tribunal on Monday, Gallant repeated his criticism of the government’s efforts to severely curtail the power of the judiciary, arguing that it had caused significant harm to national security.

“My argument is not with the reform, but with the way it is done,” Channel 12 quoted him telling the panel.

One tribunal member accused Gallant of serving as a “Trojan horse” within the party, to which he replied that he had only ever acted out of security considerations, rather than political ones.