Counter-protesters and supporters of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shout slogans from across the street during a protest held by Israelis after PM Netanyahu sacked his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, citing lack of trust, and against the PM's government, in Nahariya, Israel November 5, 2024. [Photo/Agencies]
It should not be taken as a coincidence that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was sacked hours before the US presidential election finished on Tuesday.
In a recorded statement released on Tuesday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that "trust between me and the minister of defense has cracked".
The breakdown in relations between Gallant and the Israeli leader was evident months before in their differences over a Gaza cease-fire and it culminated late last month with an open letter from the defense chief to the Israeli Cabinet opposing a showdown with Iran.
Netanyahu took the long-expected move while Israel is making intensive preparations for a widely anticipated Iranian retaliation for Israel's attacks on Iranian targets late last month, which Teheran has threatened will be of a larger scale to make Tel Aviv feel the pain. It indicates that Netanyahu is seizing all the power in his own hands.
Israel Katz, currently the foreign minister, will become defense minister, and Gideon Sa'ar will replace Katz as foreign minister, the prime minister's office said on Tuesday. That neither has extensive military experience, though Katz has served in the Cabinet throughout the war, means Netanyahu doesn't want any military veteran to throw his weight around in the Cabinet upsetting his war plan.
Gallant is a close interlocutor for the United States, the enabler of Israel's military actions, and he reportedly has daily conversations with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. As the Joe Biden administration will continue to stay in power until the swearing in of the next president on Jan 20, even before he knew who would win the election, Netanyahu, by replacing Gallant with an amateur defense chief, has sent an unmistakable message to the US that he is hell-bent on throwing the helve after the hatchet in steering the Middle East crisis to develop according to his design.
Taking advantage of the critical power transition in Washington as a window of opportunity, he is trying to make that a fait accompli as neither the Democrats nor the Republicans can afford to overhaul the US' politically correct inertia in providing unconditional support to Israel at this moment, not to mention during a possible protracted brawl between the two main US parties over the result of the election.
After Gallant was fired, there was a massive protest in Israel's capital, Tel Aviv, demanding Netanyahu's resignation. Despite the Israeli leader's careful scheming, he cannot avoid the reality that his insistence on pursuing his goals is tearing Israel apart internally, nor that the anti-Netanyahu forces are growing stronger. On the day Gallant was fired, the Israeli police announced that they had launched a criminal investigation "into the events at the beginning of the war", which might incriminate Netanyahu.
Over the past year, the Israeli leader has only made his country more insecure by pitting the nation against seven opponents in its neighborhood at the same time. The more than 100 hostages that are still held by Hamas are no longer on his mind as their use value had been long overdrawn by Israel's brutal attacks on Gaza that have caused the deaths of more than 42,000 Palestinians, among whom two-thirds are women and children.
In a televised statement on his dismissal, Gallant said it was the result of a dispute over three things: the issue of exempting ultra-Orthodox Jews from military service, the abandonment of hostages in Gaza, and the need for an official inquiry into Hamas' Oct 7 attacks. "There is and will not be any atonement for abandoning the captives," he said. "It will be a mark of Cain on the forehead of Israeli society and those leading this mistaken path."
These remarks will continuously ring true as long as Netanyahu presses ahead with his personal war.
