Netanyahu gives Gallant the boot

Muhammad Amin

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has booted war minister Yoav Gallant out of his cabinet, blaming him for a series of embarrassing media leaks and of a waning desire to wage eternal war so his boss can stay out of jail.
Netanyahu personally handed Gallant his marching orders Tuesday night, setting off a 48-hour countdown to when the dismissal takes final effect.
Observers say the Israeli leader is giving his top general a chance to reconsider; Gallant has publicly warned that disagreements at the highest levels of Israel’s military establishment over the direction its widening war is taking pose a “tangible risk to national security”.
Gallant is unlikely to climb down and Israeli media are bewailing the consequences – it’s a basic edict of military strategy, that you never fire your top general in the middle of a war.
Netanyahu famously fired Gallant in March last year, but had to backtrack two weeks later after rising public protests. This time, the rift looks final.
The Times of Israel says Wednesday: “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.”
Gallant and Netanyahu, both subjects of arrest warrant requests for war crimes at the International Criminal Court, have fallen out of late over the exclusion of Orthodox Jews from military service when the army’s reserves are under considerable strain.
Israel Katz, a Netanyahu loyalist, is touted to replace Gallant.
The former War Minister had in recent weeks urged for a complete ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza, arguing Hamas was no longer a unified fighting force in Gaza and Hezbollah’s hand was considerably degraded in southern Lebanon. He has also been an advocate of pursuing a political course to return Israel’s hostages, still in Hamas’s hands.
That’s made him popular with the public, but a bitter enemy of Netanyahu’s right wing, coalition allies who are demanding the genocide continue.
His call for an inquiry into Israel’s intelligence failures on October 7 last year have also alienated Netanyahu, “since its findings would likely be ruinous for him”, the Times of Israel says.