Tel Aviv, Israel
CNN
—
When pagers exploded across Lebanon last week, the year-long war with Hezbollah was not at the top of Israel’s political agenda.
Instead, political circles were roiled by speculation that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planned to fire Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and replace him with military newcomer Gideon Saar in a bid to consolidate domestic power. National security leaders were harshly critical. “Training for the job will take many months,” said Gadi Eisenkot, a highly respected former Israeli military commander and member of the opposition.
The pager and subsequent walkie-talkie blasts – which together killed dozens, seriously injured thousands and shook the Lebanese nerves – have put that plan back on track for now. The sudden escalation in tensions with Hezbollah provided Mr. Gallant with a lifeline. Reports in the Israeli media suggest that the hold on Gallant’s removal is temporary and that Prime Minister Netanyahu still intends to fire him.
In any democracy, it is impossible to separate policy from domestic politics, but especially in Netanyahu’s Israel, and especially now.
The Israeli government says it needs to step up its war with Hezbollah to return 60,000 displaced people to their homes in northern Israel. Since the day after the October 7 attack by Hamas, Hezbollah has been firing on Israel in solidarity with militant groups and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In Lebanon, hundreds of thousands of people have been forced from their homes by Israeli shelling.
The return of northerners to their homelands is Israel’s political obligation. And since the Cabinet officially added this goal to the war objectives, it is also a policy goal. But the escalation of the war with Hezbollah is also impeding Netanyahu’s desire to remove Gallant from office.
Notably, Prime Minister Netanyahu held security talks on Wednesday but did not invite the defense minister, an Israeli official told CNN. In his place, he invited Itamar Ben Gvir, the Minister of State Security who was convicted of inciting terrorism. Despite repeated pleas, Ben Gvir has so far been excluded from war decision-making.
Just this week, after giving the green light to a U.S.-backed mediation effort with Lebanon, the prime minister faced numbing criticism from right-wing allies who say nothing short of military conflict can remove Hezbollah from the border. Ben Gvir’s party held emergency talks, implicitly threatening to overturn the coalition government. The criticism forced Prime Minister Netanyahu to issue a statement rejecting the idea of an imminent ceasefire. When he later issued another statement about his involvement in the process with the United States, he did so only in English rather than Hebrew.
In the Hezbollah attack, the Israeli government is trying to “dissociate” Lebanon from Gaza. Hezbollah claims it is attacking Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip. Israel wants Hezbollah to stop shooting even without a ceasefire in Gaza and a hostage deal. Despite this, there are speculations among Israeli national security circles that Prime Minister Netanyahu is prolonging the Gaza war because he knows he will be under enormous pressure to call elections as soon as it ends. The idea that this is not the case is widespread.
The families of the 101 hostages still held in Gaza regularly accuse the prime minister of buying time and putting political survival above national interests.
Eyal Frata, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former national security adviser to the Israeli prime minister, told CNN that the failure to reach a ceasefire in Gaza was “mainly political in my opinion.” . “The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and the Minister of Defense feel that the situation in Gaza could enable a hostage deal and have made it clear that they support a hostage deal.
“If Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to end it, he can. So I don’t think that’s his intention at this point.”
Relations between the prime minister and Gallant had long been strained, despite a period of solidarity after the October 7 Hamas attack.
The two sides have often disagreed over the Gaza war. In August, Gallant told a closed Knesset committee that Netanyahu’s goal of “absolute victory” in Gaza was “nonsense,” according to Israeli media. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the unusual step of issuing a press statement accusing Gallant of adopting “anti-Israel rhetoric.”
Gallant was also highly critical of Netanyahu’s emphasis on Israeli control over a swath of territory along the Gaza-Egypt border known as the Philadelphia Corridor, calling it a “moral disgrace.” is. The cabinet voted against continuing the occupation, believing it would jeopardize the ceasefire and hostage agreement. “If we want to keep the hostages alive, we don’t have time,” he said.
On both the Philadelphia Corridor and Hezbollah, Netanyahu’s critics wonder why he waited months to raise the stakes on these issues if they were so important. I think so. In response, Prime Minister Netanyahu said that this was a “development of military progress.”
“The tension between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant is very long-standing and personal,” Gilad Malaha, a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, told CNN. “But above all, Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to maintain a coalition government.”
Indeed, when the prime minister previously tried to fire Gallant last March, it was over the defense minister’s opposition to Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reforms – an issue that could have brought down the government. .
The idea that Mr. Gallant might be fired over judicial reform quickly sparked mass protests that became known in Israel as “Gallant’s Night.” In the end, Prime Minister Netanyahu did not comply. Part of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s hesitancy to remove him now is the fear that a night like this will happen again.
Behind the headlines of wars in Gaza and Lebanon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ability to govern has long been threatened by an issue that appears to have taken a backseat: the recruitment into the Israeli military of ultra-Orthodox Israelis, known in Hebrew as Haredim.
“The risks to the coalition related to the Haredim bill are very high,” Malaha said. “So[Prime Minister Netanyahu]will do what helps preserve the coalition. And if Gallant gets in the way of preserving the coalition, he will do everything he can to remove him from office.”
The issue of ultra-Orthodox military service has long plagued Israel. Since the founding of Israel, ultra-Orthodox Jews have been exempt from compulsory military service because they consider Torah study to be their highest calling. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court said the exemption violated the principle of equal protection and required the IDF to begin conscription.
Since then, the ultra-Orthodox party that Netanyahu relies on to govern has been trying to draft a bill that would enshrine the new exemptions into law. So far they have been markedly reluctant to carry out their threat to leave the coalition, and they have rarely had this much power. But their dissatisfaction with the IDF’s current mission to recruit ultra-Orthodox soldiers remains a sword of Damocles.
Gallant has been a thorn in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s side, urging him not to give in to ultra-Orthodox demands for exemptions. He, like many military leaders, believes all Jewish Israelis should share in the burden of military service and says he will not support legislation that does not have broad political support.
Mr. Saar, who Netanyahu had wanted to replace Mr. Gallant, is said to have far better relations with ultra-Orthodox parties.
Eisenkot, a former Israeli chief of defense staff, said the ultra-Orthodox issue was central to Netanyahu’s desire to remove the defense minister.
“Gallant’s dismissal, and I’m not a fan of Gallant, is intended to serve a political need and pass a conscription law that will ultimately damage the Israel Defense Forces,” he said. “This is rather a cynical policy of Prime Minister Netanyahu.”
With support from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the ultra-Orthodox party wants to pass a military exemption when the Knesset returns after the Jewish holidays in October. Even if the law were passed, the Supreme Court would almost certainly strike it down, Malaha said.
“But what’s important is that we get time, and this is the most important thing for Prime Minister Netanyahu.” “A short period of time is all that matters to him, because he has a year or two until the Supreme Court makes a decision, so that’s enough.”
This short-term strategy could also be applied to Hezbollah. While there is talk of whether Israel will invade Lebanon in the coming days, there is no discussion of what a long-term settlement for Israel with its neighbor might look like.
Israeli broadcaster Kan correspondent Michael Shemesh, who is visiting New York with Netanyahu this week, said reporters had asked aides to the prime minister about the possibility of Gallant being fired.
“We don’t play politics during wartime,” the aide replied. “Some reporters couldn’t help but laugh,” Shemesh said.