Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a big risk this week when he abruptly fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant. U.S. voters were going to the polls in a presidential election in which the outcome was by no means certain, but Netanyahu seemed willing to bet that former U.S. President Donald Trump would emerge victorious and that giving Gallant the boot would cost him little in regard to relations with Israel’s most important ally.
Now that Trump has won the election, Netanyahu might be vindicated, but that will only become clear over the next few months as the new president assembles his foreign-policy team and his squishy campaign rhetoric is translated into actual policies. What is more certain is that in the short term—between now and Jan. 20—dumping Gallant will almost certainly prove to have been a bad gamble because Netanyahu will have to continue dealing with the outgoing Biden administration.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a big risk this week when he abruptly fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant. U.S. voters were going to the polls in a presidential election in which the outcome was by no means certain, but Netanyahu seemed willing to bet that former U.S. President Donald Trump would emerge victorious and that giving Gallant the boot would cost him little in regard to relations with Israel’s most important ally.
Now that Trump has won the election, Netanyahu might be vindicated, but that will only become clear over the next few months as the new president assembles his foreign-policy team and his squishy campaign rhetoric is translated into actual policies. What is more certain is that in the short term—between now and Jan. 20—dumping Gallant will almost certainly prove to have been a bad gamble because Netanyahu will have to continue dealing with the outgoing Biden administration.
That only amounts to a couple months, but those weeks could prove to be critical. Iran has renewed its threat to stage a third missile attack on Israel, which will again need the United States to come to its aid. Israel’s simultaneous wars with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon are taxing its human and armament resources; it cannot afford delays or other obstacles to U.S. shipments. Biden may also use his final days in office to end the war with Hamas, as he has long sought to do, by ratcheting up pressure for a hostage deal and for Israel to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor, where Gaza borders Egypt. Netanyahu will likely play for time to escape Biden’s demands, but it will certainly be a difficult period.
Having suffered abuse and insults at Netanyahu’s hands over the course of the war, the Biden administration may use its lame-duck weeks to settle scores. There is a precedent for that: In his final days in office, then-President Barack Obama opted not to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution against West Bank settlements. That opened up legal complications for Israel that it contends with to this day.
For Biden, the opportunity is there: The council is scheduled to hold a meeting about the Israel-Hamas war in less than two weeks. An angry U.S. president may opt not to veto a resolution calling for sanctions on Israel if it doesn’t agree to accept a cease-fire agreement.
That’s where retaining Gallant, at least for another few weeks, would have been a wise move. Netanyahu is barely on speaking terms with Biden, who has grown to distrust and dislike the Israeli leader. Gallant had been Israel’s point person with the White House and U.S. Defense Department. Netanyahu resented that (and last month even blocked Gallant from visiting Washington in order to not be upstaged). With Gallant gone, there is no one in the Israeli government to fill the role.
In the long term, Netanyahu has higher hopes for the incoming Trump administration.
Trump is widely believed to have turned on the Israeli leader after the latter congratulated Biden on his 2020 election victory, but Netanyahu launched a campaign to return to Trump’s good graces, visiting Mar-a-Lago last July and speaking to him by telephone several times in the final weeks of the presidential campaign. Perhaps to make up for his gaffe in 2020, Netanyahu was among the first world leaders to congratulate Trump on Wednesday, calling it “history’s greatest comeback.”
Whether Netanyahu can really establish a personal chemistry with Trump remains to be seen. Regardless, there is good reason for Netanyahu to worry he will face the same pressures he did under Biden to end the fighting in Gaza and Lebanon. Trump has spoken repeatedly about ending (not winning) the war with Hamas, and last week said the same about the fighting in Lebanon. Trump has promised to take a tougher line on Iran and its nuclear ambitions, but he hasn’t shown any appetite for waging war, as Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, the next vice president, confirmed last week. “Our interest very much is in not going to war with Iran. It would be a huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country,” he said, which fits in well with Trump’s overall foreign-policy posture.
Where Netanyahu may get more satisfaction is on humanitarian aid to Gaza and the growing settler violence in the West Bank, two issues that Trump is unlikely to press Israel on. That would help Netanyahu, who has been forced to maneuver uncomfortably between the Biden administration’s demands and his far-right coalition partners who want to cut off aid to Gaza and give the settlers free rein. Even here, however, Netanyahu may run up against the same pressures from Trump if a Gaza cease-fire is conditioned on more assistance or settler violence ignites another Palestinian uprising.
Given the foreign-policy risks of firing Gallant, the question is why Netanyahu did it. His official explanation is that there was a “crisis of faith” between the two men. That is true, but it has been true for several months as the two argued over a cease-fire and hostage deal with Hamas. Gallant and much of the Israeli defense establishment wanted one; Netanyahu, fearing his far-right coalition partners, showed little genuine interest.
But the real reason is day care subsidies. That might sound like something far away from the purview of a defense minister, but it was what finally cost Gallant his job.
Netanyahu has been struggling to find a work-around to last June’s High Court of Justice ruling that young ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) men could no longer receive a blanket exemption from military conscription. On one hand, the Israeli military is contending with a severe personnel shortage created by the war that can only be realistically solved by adding the ultra-Orthodox to the roster of draft-eligible men. Public opinion is heavily in favor of doing so. On the other hand, the coalition’s ultra-Orthodox political parties have threatened to bolt if Netanyahu doesn’t find a way for their constituents to avoid the draft.
Netanyahu’s plan A was to dust off some old legislation that would have mandated Haredi conscription but at such a low bar as to make it meaningless. Given the public mood, that bill ran into opposition from usually obedient coalition lawmakers. Plan B, which surfaced last month, was to rewrite the rules for government day care subsidies.
When the army had issued a first round of draft notices to Haredi men last summer, they were largely ignored. But shirkers now face the loss of government allowances and day care subsidies. For ultra-Orthodox families and their many children, the subsidies are a financial lifeline they cannot afford to lose. The law is designed to prevent that by making entitlement dependent on the mother’s status, not the father’s. Haredi men would thus be able to dodge the draft at no financial cost.
Gallant opposed both pieces of legislation and poured fuel on the fire earlier this week by issuing a second round of draft notices to ultra-Orthodox men. It was a provocative act that Netanyahu feared might bring down his government. That was especially the case as the day care law was running up against the same opposition within the governing coalition as the conscription law, and Netanyahu had no choice but to pull it from the Knesset agenda.
Netanyahu can count on Gallant’s designated successor, Israel Katz, to do his bidding on the Haredi draft and, indeed, on all war-related policy. His appointment is a step toward getting the law passed and keeping the coalition intact. But it presents other problems, such as the question of who will mediate between Netanyahu and the White House.
Katz has held a large number of cabinet jobs over the years, most recently as foreign minister, but he has virtually no experience in national security. That creates a dangerous vacuum. Netanyahu cabinet is populated by far-right ideologues and loyalists with a demonstrated lack of competence. Netanyahu himself recognized that after Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and, as a result, created a war cabinet that comprised himself, Gallant, and Benny Gantz, an opposition party leader who agreed to join the government, as well as two nonvoting observers (Gantz’s colleague, Gadi Eisenkot, and a Netanyahu confidante, Ron Dermer). Netanyahu made sure to keep the rest of the cabinet as far away as possible from involvement in the war.
Gantz and Eisenkot quit in June, and the war cabinet was disbanded. Now, Gallant is being sent home at an especially problematic time. The war with Hamas has widened into a complex multifront endeavor that includes a full-fledged conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon; operations against the Houthis and militias in Syria; and a dangerous tit-for-tat war with Iran. Support for the war effort is flagging. The army’s resources are being taxed in an unprecedented way.
Even though he shares much of the blame for Oct. 7, Gallant was seen by Israelis as a more effective war leader than Netanyahu, whose decision-making is viewed by many as tainted by personal political considerations. The war is now Netanyahu’s alone to wage.
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