Benjamin Netanyahu fires Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, sparking protests across Israel | Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, a figure widely seen by Israel’s international allies as a brake on far-right elements in the country’s coalition government, sparking protests around Israel.

Netanyahu said in a video statement late Tuesday that “significant gaps in the handling of the battle” in Gaza had emerged.

“At the height of a war, there is a need for complete trust between the prime minister and the defense minister … In recent months, that trust between me and the defense minister has been damaged,” he said. The move led to protests across the country.

Israel Katz, a member of the Likud party who currently serves as foreign minister, will replace Gallant. The leader of the center-right New Hope, Gideon Saar, who rejoined Netanyahu’s coalition in September, will serve as foreign minister.

Katz wrote on X: “We will work together to march the security system to victory against our enemies and to achieve the goal of the war: the return of all the abductees as the main value mission, the destruction
of Hamas in Gaza, the defeat of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the containment of
Iranian aggression and the return of the inhabitants of the north and
south to their homes in safety.”

Within hours, thousands of protesters gathered in central Tel Aviv, beating drums and blocking the city’s main road. About 1,000 people demonstrated outside Netanyahu’s home in Jerusalem, while protests and roadblocks also occurred elsewhere in the country, with some protesters reportedly clashing with police.

In Tel Aviv, the protesters held up signs with slogans such as “We deserve better leaders” and “Leaving no one behind!”. One protester wore handcuffs and a face mask with Netanyahu’s likeness, while others carried “Bring them home now!” T-shirts referring to hostages held in Gaza.

“We, the protesters, believe that Gallant … is actually the only normal person in the government,” said teacher Samuel Miller, 54, condemning Netanyahu’s government for opening “new fronts in uncalled for wars”.

Netanyahu had been at odds with Gallant since his latest coalition took office in late 2022, with the defense minister becoming the only senior government figure to oppose planned judicial reforms that critics say were democratic backsliding.

His firing was long overdue. Over 13 months of war in Gaza, and one in Lebanon, disagreements over strategy and how best to bring home Israeli hostages often brought the two men into conflict. The final straw appears to have been Gallant’s renewed effort this week to enforce military conscription for the ultra-Orthodox community. The two ultra-Orthodox parties in the Knesset, Netanyahu’s longtime allies, are stubbornly opposed to the new policy.

In a statement late Tuesday, Gallant said his dismissal was prompted by disagreements over ultra-Orthodox conscription, Israel’s “moral obligation to return the hostages” and the need for a full investigation to learn from the Oct. 7 terror attacks.

Gallant had also publicly rejected Netanyahu’s oft-repeated goal of “total victory” over Hamas, saying Israel’s military success had created the conditions for a diplomatic deal. “The security of the State of Israel was and will always remain my life’s mission,” he wrote on X on Tuesday evening, minutes after Netanyahu’s announcement.

The Hostage Families Forum released a statement expressing deep concern about how the sudden change could affect the fate of the 101 hostages still in Gaza.

“We expect the incoming defense minister to prioritize a hostage agreement and work closely with mediators and the international community to ensure the immediate release of all hostages,” it said.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid said on X that the move was an “act of madness” in the middle of a war. “Netanyahu is selling Israel’s security and the Israeli army soldiers for a shameful political survival,” he said.

Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, whose largely ceremonial office is meant to help unify the country, called the dismissal “the last thing Israel needs.”

The far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, praised Netanyahu for firing Gallant. “With Gallant … absolute victory cannot be achieved – and the prime minister was wise to remove him from his position,” Ben-Gvir said on Telegram.

Yair Golan, the leader of the Democrats, a newly founded left-wing party, used social media to call on Israelis to take to the streets in protest of Gallant’s firing. Thousands of Israelis took part in spontaneous demonstrations and strikes in March to oppose Netanyahu’s first attempt to fire his defense minister over the legal review. The unexpected backlash forced the prime minister to reverse his decision and postpone the inspection until the next Knesset meeting.

Polls show that Gallant has consistently been the most popular member of Netanyahu’s cabinet. A senior general in the military before entering politics, he was widely seen at home and abroad as a moderating influence on Netanyahu’s decision-making. The prosecution of the International Criminal Court is seeking an arrest warrant for both men for Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza.

Benny Gantz, a major Netanyahu rival, former defense minister and leader of the center-right National Unity party, joined the prime minister’s three-man war cabinet with Gallant after the October 7 Hamas attack, but he resigned in June and said that Netanyahu was “preventing us from moving forward towards a true victory”.

Gantz described the move as “politics at the expense of national security”.

It is possible that the prime minister could close the war cabinet and return to an earlier model where security issues are discussed in a restricted forum before being presented at regular cabinet meetings.

A White House spokesman praised Gallant as an “important partner” and said the United States would “continue to work with Israel’s next defense minister.”

But a senior US official said it had “real questions about the reasons for Gallant’s firing and about what drives the decision”, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported. It quoted the official as saying Netanyahu’s decision was “surprising” and “worrisome, especially in the midst of two wars and as Israel prepares to defend itself against a potential attack by Iran”.

In Gaza, the World Health Organization said it hoped the largest medical evacuation from the territory since the war broke out would begin on Wednesday, with 113 seriously ill and injured patients expected to leave via Israel for treatment in the United Arab Emirates and Romania.

About 14,000 people are in urgent need of medical care outside Gaza, according to WHO data. About half suffer from serious injuries caused by the fighting and half from serious ailments such as cancer.

Earlier in the war, Israel allowed around 5,000 people to leave Gaza for medical reasons, but only 282 have been able to do so since Israeli forces took control of Rafah on the Egyptian border in May. Rafah had served as Gaza’s main lifeline to the outside world since Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on the territory after Hamas took control of it in 2007.

It was not immediately clear whether any of the medical evacuees would be transferred from the northern third of Gaza, which Israel cut off from the rest of the strip at the beginning of the year. Israeli forces have been waging a renewed ground and air offensive in the area since early October, which it says is necessary to wipe out Hamas cells that have regrouped.

Sweeping evacuation orders for the 400,000 people the UN estimates still live there, the blockade of aid and food supplies, and the targeting of civilian infrastructure, including the three remaining and struggling hospitals, have led rights groups to accuse Israel of the war crime of to attempt to forcefully displace the remaining population.

Israel has denied that it is systematically removing Palestinians from the area or using food as a weapon, both of which are illegal under international law.

At least 30 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes across Gaza on Tuesday, including eight women and six children in the northern town of Beit Lahiya. The Israeli military said it had attacked a weapons depot.

Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report