Netanyahu’s firing of Gallant mid-war is reckless, divisive and dangerous to Israel
The PM has put his political survival above the state’s fundamental interests; if he now also ousts the AG, there will be nobody principled and potent to challenge his authority
David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He is the author of "Still Life with Bombers" (2004) and "A Little Too Close to God" (2000), and co-author of "Shalom Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin" (1996). He previously edited The Jerusalem Post (2004-2011) and The Jerusalem Report (1998-2004).
In March 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he was firing Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who had publicly warned that the internal rift over the government’s plans to weaken the judiciary was so deep as to embolden Israel’s enemies and pose a tangible risk to national security. Two weeks later, amid vast public protests, the prime minister reversed the move.
On Tuesday night, Netanyahu fired Gallant a second time — and, unlike the previous occasion, handed him a letter of dismissal, which takes formal effect after 48 hours.
The sacking, in other words, is emphatically for real this time. And the circumstances are much more devastating for Israel.
Far from facing concerns about the potential emboldening of enemies, Israel is more than a year into a war that began with Hamas’s invasion and slaughter in southern Israel and has spread to multiple fronts — including across the northern border, where the IDF is battling Hezbollah, and a direct confrontation with Iran, which is widely expected to soon carry out a third attack on Israel following strikes in April and October.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid immediately termed Netanyahu’s sacking of Gallant “an act of madness.” And while for the prime minister personally it makes a terrible kind of sense, for Israel as a whole, it is plain terrible: Netanyahu has put his political survival above the most fundamental interests of the state.
His coalition depends on the support of two ultra-Orthodox parties, which are insisting that the government legislate the continued exemption of most ultra-Orthodox Jews from military service. Netanyahu has been having great difficulty mustering a majority for such legislation, and Gallant — aware that the standing army and the reserves are under extraordinary strain, and that the IDF needs all the recruits it can get — was leading the opposition to it. Israel Katz, the Likud loyalist Netanyahu is installing in his place, will dutifully toe the prime minister’s line — on this issue and all others.
Gallant was also the most important advocate of maximal efforts to secure a hostage-ceasefire deal in Gaza, arguing, with the support of the security chiefs, that Israel should be pursuing a wide arrangement that would also end the fighting in the north — where Hezbollah has been greatly degraded, though certainly not destroyed — and in Gaza, where Hamas no longer functions as an organized fighting force.
Gallant has urged prioritizing the return of the 97 hostages still held by Hamas since October 7, 2023, even at the price of ending the war, arguing that Israel could and likely would return to further tackle Hamas in the future. Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners, however, bitterly oppose any such arrangement, and have repeatedly threatened to bolt the coalition were it to advance what they have denounced as a “reckless” deal.
Gallant has also publicly called for the establishment of a powerhouse state commission of inquiry into the events surrounding Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre — which would focus on the political and military failures that enabled the Gaza terrorist-government to carry it out. Netanyahu has steadfastly resisted any such inquiry, since its findings would likely be ruinous for him.
In a controlled but passionate address to the nation on Tuesday night, three hours after he was fired, Gallant cited his differences with Netanyahu on precisely those three issues — his insistence on conscription for all Israelis of military age; his conviction that a hostage deal is doable and that there will “no atoning” for the failure to secure it; and his calls for a state commission to clarify what went wrong and learn the lessons of October 7 — as the reasons for his dismissal.
With Gallant out of the way, Netanyahu considers that his ultra-Orthodox and far-right partners can be accommodated, his most irritating critic will be gone, and his hold on power will be secure for the foreseeable future.
If the attorney general is also now removed, there will be nobody principled and potent, and nothing but our embattled judiciary, to challenge Netanyahu’s absolute authority
He is ridding himself of the gatekeeper of Israel’s military integrity and interests. At a cabinet meeting on Monday, not incidentally, Netanyahu also reportedly asked his justice minister to find a “solution” to the infuriating Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, a vital gatekeeper of Israel’s democracy, who has repeatedly told him that his efforts to maintain the exemption of the ultra-Orthodox from military service are illegal. If she, too, is removed to be replaced by a sycophant, there will be nobody principled and potent, and nothing but our embattled judiciary, to challenge his absolute authority.
The prime minister may also now set about ordering a changing of the guard in the security establishment, with IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and Shin Bet head Ronen Bar at the top of the list. His acolytes have tried ever since the Hamas massacre to shift maximal blame to the security establishment and away from the Netanyahu-led political echelon.
Netanyahu made his move days after a judge partially lifted a gag order into an investigation of what is reported to have been the “systematic” theft of classified intelligence documents from the IDF, and the transfer of at least one such document to a Netanyahu spokesman, who then allegedly leaked parts of it that served the prime minister’s interests to Germany’s Bild newspaper. And he acted just hours after news broke of a second investigation that has been conducted in secret for months concerning alleged “criminal incidents” linked to the Prime Minister’s Office since the start of the war, apparently related to reported efforts by Netanyahu to doctor minutes of war meetings.
Along with the small matter of the US elections, it is those two probes, deeply troubling for Netanyahu, that would have been making headlines in Israel on Tuesday night.
The prime minister may have assessed that Israelis, battered and exhausted by more than a year of a war that began with the single worst catastrophe in the whole history of the modern state, would be disinclined to rush into the streets in their hundreds of thousands, as they did several times in March 2023, to relentlessly protest the sacking of the defense minister. And so it proved on Tuesday night.
Netanyahu’s firing of Gallant is far more dangerous for Israel now than it was last time around. The prime minister has booted the experienced ex-general at the political helm of the military, an independent thinker dedicated to the security of Israel who sought to strengthen the army despite the potential political cost. Highly regarded by the troops, his casual ouster, and his replacement by the lightweight Katz, can only undermine military competence, unity and morale, and raise new concerns in parts of the Israeli public about the oversight of the army in which they and their loved ones serve.
Gallant has also established very good relations with his US counterpart Lloyd Austin, in what has constituted a vital partnership as Washington has deployed forces to the region to deter Iran and led a regional coalition that helped intercept almost all of the drones and missiles the ayatollahs have fired at Israel.
In a video statement he recorded and issued immediately after firing Gallant, Netanyahu went so far as to accuse the defense minister of indirectly aiding Israel’s enemies, asserting that Gallant had said and done things that contradicted government decisions, and that their disagreements “came to the attention of our enemies — who took pleasure in this and derived significant benefit from it.”
In truth, however, it is Netanyahu’s unconscionable and reckless decision to dismiss a courageous, principled and patriotic defense minister at the height of a bitter war, undermining the internal cohesion on which Israel’s vital resilience depends, that will delight and potentially benefit Israel’s enemies.
