Gallant’s trip to US delayed, reportedly after Netanyahu sets last-minute obstacles
PM said to block trip until he speaks with Biden and cabinet approves response to Iranian missile attack; defense minister was set to meet Austin and top Biden aide on Wednesday
The Defense Ministry on Tuesday informed the Pentagon that it is postponing Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s planned trip to the United States, hours before his scheduled departure, following reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set last-minute conditions for his approval of the visit.
According to several Hebrew media reports, Netanyahu was blocking Gallant’s visit because he wanted to speak with US President Joe Biden about Israel’s planned retaliation against Iran before the defense minister departed.
The two leaders haven’t spoken in nearly 50 days amid growing frustration in Washington with Netanyahu’s handling of the war and perceived lack of a strategy for how to bring it to an end. Gallant, widely considered a voice of relative moderation, is seen as the Biden administration’s preferred contact in the Israeli government, at a time of increasing distrust between Biden and Netanyahu.
Gallant had been scheduled to depart Tuesday night, and then meet Wednesday with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, a US Defense Department spokesperson announced.
Channel 12 news reported that Netanyahu has been waiting for what he thinks was a promised call from Biden for the past 10 days.
The report said Netanyahu was also conditioning the trip on the security cabinet first approving Israel’s planned response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack last week. It said Gallant told Netanyahu on the eve of Rosh Hashanah — a day after the Iranian attack — about the invitation he had received from Austin.
The defense minister intended to take senior Defense Ministry officials with him, Channel 12 reported, and to discuss coordination with the US regarding the Israeli response to Iran, US support for the defense of Israel in the event of an Iranian response, and issues relating to the deployment of US forces in the area.
It quoted unnamed officials in the Prime Minister’s Office as saying there was no point in Gallant making the trip until the cabinet approved the response to Iran, since that’s the key issue he was supposed to discuss with Austin.
National Unity party chief Benny Gantz slammed Netanyahu over the reports, posting on X that “canceling the defense minister’s trip to the US damages national security at a crucial time to our security, for personal and political considerations.”
Gantz, a former war cabinet minister who left the wartime government months ago due to what he said was Netanyahu involving political and other considerations in the war management, wrote that “a prime minister who had Israel’s security as his top priority would have sent the defense minister” and “coordinated the messages with him.”
There have been repeated clashes over the past two years between Gallant and Netanyahu, who has for months been flirting with the option of firing his defense minister.
Netanyahu fired Gallant in March 2023 after the defense minister warned about the danger to national security stemming from rifts over the government’s highly divisive judicial overhaul plans. Amid unprecedented mass public protests, Gallant was reinstated two weeks later.
Last year, Netanyahu also reportedly blocked Gallant from visiting Washington twice because he did not receive an invitation himself. In August 2023, Netanyahu was widely understood to be barring ministers from high-level meetings in Washington as he waited for a meeting with Biden.