Yves here. I hate to sound like a stickler regarding the Common Dreams post reproduced below. Trying to find differences among genodicers may sound like what the Japanese call a height competition among peanuts: seemingly non-existent distinctions matter to them. Nevertheless, it is not correct to depict the newly-installed Israel Defense Minister Israel Katz as on a par with Yoav Gallant, who was just ousted by Netanyahu. By Israeli standards, Gallant is a moderate and Katz is a hard-liner.
There had long been friction between Gallant and Netanyahu. Netanyahu had even fired Gallant before, in 2023, but reinstated him after a month.
Gallant seemed surprised by his removal, although there had been signs things were getting worse between the two men. Gallant seemed to see part of his job as advocating for the IDF, which by all accounts, ex the air force, is exhausted and also suffering an unheard level of deaths and casualties. Larry Wilkerson pointed out that the injuries are at least as consequential for Israel, since the level is very high due to Israel’s proximity to front lines (ie, soldiers that might die from their wounds in other theaters of combat can usually be transported quickly to very good hospitals). And these injuries are often, as the bloodless saying goes, life-altering, such as the loss of limbs.
So Gallant’s comparative moderation seemed to come at least in part from understanding the IDF’s limits and trying to get Israel to chart a more realistic course. But the hardliner see the wars as eschatological and at least some believe God will bail them out. Netanyahu needs to keep the conflicts going to remain in office and out of jail.
A recent sign that relations between Gallant and Netanyahu had deteriorated further was when Netanyahu cancelled a Gallant trip to the US to meet with Department of Defense officials to “coordinate” as in negotiate and plan, what Israel’s response to the Iran October 1 missile strikes on Israel, which were eventually admitted to have been effective in accurately hitting military targets (and worse for Israel, largely getting through Israel’s air defenses). Netanyahu insisted Biden speak to him first. The Gallant trip was not rescheduled; instead Department of Defense personnel came to Israel.
I suspect the big reason for Netanyahu cancelling the Gallant visit was he suspected Gallant would work (as in plot) with the US as to how to curb the Israel response, particularly since the Iran success exposed how vulnerable Israel would be to another, almost certainly bigger, Iran attack. Recall Iran had said it was prepared to call things a day after its October 1 demonstration, but if Israel attacked Iran again, Iran would hit much harder and would among other things, target civilian infrastructure. The Western press reported that the US keenly wanted the Israel to make a limited retaliation, as opposed to hitting Iran’s nuclear program and oil infrastructure as it threatened. The Biden Administration desperate to forestall a widening of the war before the elections, particularly since Iran is too big well bunkered for Israel to deliver a knockout blow. Iran could easily take countermeasures that would cripple oil shipping and/or production and drive energy prices through the roof.
Now admittedly, forcing the US to come to Israel to negotiate the strike package did not seem to deliver Netanyahu the buy-in to the sort of more aggressive response he and other top officials had so loudly talked up. However, having the discussions take place in Israel would prevent Gallant and any like-minded members of his team from conversing freely.
A Times of Israel account has Netanyahu of depicting Gallant as insubordinate, as in not always executing on his and the Cabinet’s directives, and then delivering a cheap shot, by depicting Gallant as a near-traitor:
“I made many attempts to bridge these gaps, but they kept getting wider,” he [Netanyahu] said. “They also came to the knowledge of the public in an unacceptable way, and worse than that, they came to the knowledge of the enemy — our enemies enjoyed it and derived a lot of benefit from it.”
However, the televised attack gave Gallant the opportunity to tell his side of the story. Again from the Times of Israel:
Following his dismissal on Tuesday, Gallant issued a one-line statement of his own, writing on X that “the security of the State of Israel always was, and will always remain, my life’s mission.”
The statement was identical to the one he published on the night of his first firing, 18 months ago.
He elaborated at a press conference later on Tuesday night, where he appeared visibly emotional as he explained that the reason for his dismissal was threefold: the need to draft Haredi men to the IDF, the imperative to bring back the hostages from Gaza, and the need for a state commission of inquiry in the October 7 Hamas terror onslaught and ensuing war.
All three initiatives are threats to Netanyahu. The IDF has just started drafting Haredim over their fierce opposition. Their parties are part of Netanyahu’s coalition. The hostage issue is an even bigger problem for Bibi. Getting hostages returned means negotiations with Hamas. Hamas will not release them for anything less than a permanent, or at least plenty long ceasefire. A ceasefire would generate demands for new elections. An independent commission on October 7 would similarly undermine Netanyahu. Not only did the attacks take place on his watch, but a probe would also call attention to the way Netanyahu supported Hamas even before the 2006 elections that made it the leading party in Gaza out of a scheme gone pear-shaped to undermine the PLO.
The Financial Times points out that Netanyahu timed this firing (presumably also with the marked uptick of killing in Gaza) to take advantage of US election pre-occupation. From the Financial Times:
But, despite the increasingly public feuding between Gallant and Netanyahu, the timing of his sacking — which comes as Israel is in the middle of a multi-front conflict with foes including Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran — was unexpected….
Gallant has been an important interlocutor with Israel’s main ally, the US, throughout the wars, and a person familiar with the situation said announcing his sacking on the day of the American election was not a coincidence.
“Everyone knows that the Americans like Gallant,” the person added. “So [Netanyahu] chose this timing because no one [in the US] has the attention span to follow this closely [today].”
Larry Wilkerson colorfully weighed in on the Gallant sacking. He sees the shake-up as Netanyahu needing to distract attention from his military failure and domestic pressures. He also describes the number of serious injuries in Lebanon alone as 4,000, which is very high given the short duration of that campaign.
Now to the main event.
By Brett Wilkins. Originally published at Common Dreams
Palestine defenders on Tuesday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of swapping one “genocidal lunatic” for another after the right-wing leader fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and replaced him with Israel Katz, who was serving as foreign minister.
“Israel just doubled down on prolonging its genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza,” journalist and genocide scholar Samira Mohyeddin said on social media following Netanyahu’s moves.
Netanyahu cited what he called a “crisis of trust” that “gradually deepened” as his reason for the changes, which came as Israel is waging war on Gaza and Lebanon while bracing for Iranian retaliation for recent Israeli attacks on the Middle East nation.
“In the midst of a war, more than ever, full trust is required between the prime minister and the minister of defense,” Netanyahu said Tuesday, according toThe Jerusalem Post. “This trust has cracked between myself and the defense minister.”
Katz, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, previously held several Cabinet posts, most recently as Israel’s top diplomat. He was the minister of energy and infrastructure on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants launched a surprise attack on Israel that left more than 1,100 people dead—at least some killed by fratricidal fire—and over 240 others kidnapped and taken to Gaza.
Two days later, Katz issued an order to “immediately cut off the water supply from Israel to Gaza.”
“Electricity and fuel were cut off yesterday,” he said. “What was will not be. All the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave.”
Katz’s directive followed Gallant’s order for a “complete siege” of Gaza.
“There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant said. “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
These statements by Gallant and Katz are cited in the International Court of Justice’s January 26 provisional order for Israel to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza. Israel—which is on trial for alleged genocide at the ICJ—has been accused of ignoring this and subsequent orders issued by the tribunal.
On Tuesday, Israeli state media reported that the Israel Defense Forces has completed its division of Gaza into two parts, and that “there is no intention to allow the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes.”
Katz has also come under fire for declaring United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres “persona non grata in Israel” for criticizing the country’s war on Gaza, which has left more than 155,000 Palestinians in Gaza dead, wounded, or missing and millions more starving and sick.
While serving as Israel’s foreign minister, Katz was also condemned for threatening “severe consequences” for nations that officially recognize Palestinian statehood. Nearly 150 of the 193 United Nations member states recognizePalestine.
Katz also raised eyebrows in 2022 after he made a thinly veiled threat to ethnically cleanse Arab citizens of Israel. Responding to Israeli Arab students who displayed the Palestinian flag on college campuses, Katz said “remember ’48,” a reference to 1948, when Israel declared its independence amid an ethnic cleansing campaign in which more than 750,000 Arabs were expelled from Palestine to make way for Jewish settlement.
Palestinians call this mass dispossession and expulsion the Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic.
“Remember our independence war and your Nakba,” Katz said. “Don’t stretch the rope too much… If you don’t calm down, we’ll teach you a lesson that won’t be forgotten.”
“Ask your elders—your grandfathers, and grandmothers—and they will explain to you that in the end, the Jews awaken, they know to defend themselves and the idea of the Jewish state,” he added.
In one of his final acts as foreign minister, Katz on Monday initiated the process of annulling a 1967 agreement between Israel and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which Israel accuses of being “infiltrated” by Hamas. The U.N. strongly refutes Israel’s accusation.