In the brief statement Defense Minister Yoav Gallant made to the media after he was fired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he enumerated three issues that were at the center of the tension between the two: Gallant's call to promote a hostage deal, his opposition to legislation that would enshrine the draft evasion of ultra-Orthodox Jews, and his demand that a state commission of inquiry be established to investigate the October 7 massacre. Netanyahu's office issued a long list of sins it attributed to Gallant, some of them imaginary. In essence, the dismissed minister is said to have shown disrespect for the prime minister, lack of initiative in the war (Netanyahu is supposedly responsible for all the offensive moves that succeeded), and an attempt to grab credit for the achievements.
Relations between the two were indeed notably poor. Throughout the war they barely spoke, other than on urgent military matters. Surveys conducted in recent months, after achievements in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, showed that the majority of the public does not support the government's policy, does not believe in Netanyahu's leadership, and views Gallant as the only cabinet minister who is functioning properly. The public stubbornly attributed responsibility for the successes to Gallant, while Netanyahu tried to brand him with failure.
The successor, Israel Katz, is almost completely lacking in relevant experience, is totally dependent on Netanyahu (which was why he got the job), and will have a hard time entering the Defense Ministry and getting a handle on the complex portfolio in wartime. Little of all that is of interest to Netanyahu. First, it's obvious that considerations of his personal survival now take precedence for him over everything else; and second, he doesn't care what the opinion of the citizenry is, because he believes that the opposition and the protest movement have no effective channel to oust him at this time. The coalition looks relatively stable at present. It will rest on the four MKs of Gideon Sa'ar's faction, with the aim of staying in power until the next election, two years from now.
After Gallant's ouster, Netanyahu's circles threatened this week to fire the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, Herzl Halevi, and the head of the Shin Bet, Ronen Bar. A veiled threat was also aimed at the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, whom Netanyahu labeled "contrarian." The prime minister, says a person well acquainted with the situation, "walked around since the first 'Gallant night,' in March 23, with a note in his pocket [metaphorically speaking] to remind himself to fire Gallant. The move was completed now, when an opportunity, in his view, arose. But in the other pocket there's still another note, with the names of Halevi, Bar and Baharav-Miara on it. The moment it becomes possible, they will be dismissed, too."
Diverse reasons exist for the planned firings. The IDF chief of staff and Shin Bet head must be held accountable for the blunder of October 7, especially when the question of investigating the war crops up again. The head of the Shin Bet and the attorney general are spearheading the new security investigation in the Prime Minister's Office, and they might also interfere with other anti-democratic actions. The chief of staff and the attorney general will hamper the draft-evasion legislation.
Every dismissal of this sort is inherently complicated, and in the case of the attorney general could also bring intervention from the High Court of Justice. But what was demonstrated on "Gallant Night 2" is that pretty well everything will succeed. The protest movement lacks the passion and the intensity of last year. Gallant's ouster was a testing of the waters, which concluded successfully. The next targets have already been marked; more dismissals will follow in their wake.
Just before Gallant's firing, a report in Haaretz generated a certain interest in Israel and abroad. The IDF, its denials notwithstanding, is in practice implementing part of the "Generals' Plan" in the Gaza Strip. The broad divisional operation in Jabalya refugee camp didn't succeed in pushing tens of thousands of Palestinians to south of the Netzarim Corridor, but most of them were distanced to south of Jabalya. In other words, the northernmost quarter of the Strip has been forcibly emptied of its inhabitants. (The retired generals planned to empty the entire northern half).
Children stare at the destruction following an Israeli strike in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on Thursday.Credit: AFP/EYAD BABA
As usual, logistics tells the true story. The army is demolishing houses and infrastructure on a vast scale, and building roads for the benefit of future activity. The far-right Knesset factions are already planning the next stage: establishment of settlements in the territory from which the Palestinians will be expelled. It's not clear yet how much any of this bothers Donald Trump, the U.S. president-elect. The transition administration of Joe Biden might be more sensitive to such moves. The settlers might receive a signal to hold off until after next January 20, when Trump will be inaugurated as president.
On Wednesday, the 40th day since the death of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah launched heavy volleys into Israel, and fired twice at the center of the country. An IDF soldier and an 18-year-old youth were killed by the firing at the Galilee. Nasrallah's successor as the organization's secretary general, Naim Qassem, said Hezbollah is ready to wage a war of attrition with Israel. The disparity in forces between the IDF and Hezbollah is clear, and was clearly manifested in the battles in southern Lebanon, but the organization is continuing to do battle, as long as no diplomatic solution is reached.
The continued shooting into the civilian rear is preventing the government from returning the inhabitants of the border zone to their homes, even though Hezbollah has been pushed back from the first line of villages across the border. The quandary now, which the chief of staff hinted at on Wednesday, will be whether to launch a new offensive, against the second line of villages, or to stabilize a defensive line within the territory during the winter months. In practice, the army would prefer an agreement and withdrawal, making do with what has already been achieved. It's not clear whether Biden will make a last effort to arrive at an agreement by January, or leave the problem to Trump.
In the background, an unsettled account remains between Iran and Israel. Tehran is threatening daily to respond to Israel's October 26 aerial attack. The assessment is that, despite internal hesitation in Tehran in the wake of Trump's victory, that the Iranian response will, finally, be implemented. There is talk of a drone attack from Iraq, via the Shi'ite militias there. The government in Baghdad is not enthusiastic.
In Lebanon and Gaza, even after the IDF's achievements, a long, blood-drenched war apparently still awaits Israel: continued firing at the domestic front, more fallen troops, an increasingly heavy burden for combat soldiers in the regular army and the reserves, fury at the abandonment of the captives. The last achievement, the final one of the war, needs to be the return of the captives, even if this will entail an agreement that obligates Israel to make concessions. Even after the military blow suffered by Hamas (which has not been vanquished), no other way looms. The alternative, as Einat Zangauker, the mother of abducted Matan, puts it bluntly, is that they will all come back to us in the end as bodies in black garbage bags.
Einav Zangauker protests in Tel Aviv, Friday.Credit: AFP/JACK GUEZ
The self-evident needs to be spelled out here: After 13 months of fighting, and after the army fought in almost the entire Gaza Strip, 101 captives remain a few kilometers from IDF troops, without Israel being able to free them. The time has come to stop selling ourselves illusions about military pressure that will bring about the release of the hostages by itself, or about our ability to bring about the absolute collapse of Hamas. The very fact that the organization is making demands in the negotiations shows that the military victory in Gaza is not total.
In the end, the only way out of Lebanon and Gaza is diplomatic. It will rest on significant military achievements, and Israel needs to obtain guarantees from Washington enabling it to act militarily in Lebanon and Gaza if the need arises. But there will be no solution here that will vanquish the enemy and achieve everything we want, without a diplomatic settlement at the end.
Regrettably, neither Netanyahu nor his coalition accept this conclusion. Over the past two years, we feared initially the scenario of a creeping dictatorship, amid the gradual restriction of the public's ability to protest and act against its government. Since October 2023, we have discovered that we are sinking into a scenario of eternal war. The events of the past week – Trump's victory, Gallant's ouster – show that it's possible to get two for the price of one: both a war without end and a fading democracy.
Twice the prime minister and his staff have panicked over negative developments in the war, and twice, according to suspicions now being investigated by the police and Shin Bet, people in Netanyahu's circles acted in a way that is liable to entangle them in crimes. The first time occurred in connection with the morning of October 7 itself: Netanyahu, as many have described the situation, among them Gallant and former minister Gadi Eisenkot, was in shock during the first hours after the massacre and had difficulty functioning. This week it was reported that the police raided the Prime Minister's Office and collected material. It's related to the suspicion that individuals in Netanyahu's circles tried to falsify the documentation of discussions that were held in the first hours after the terrorist attack.
The second time occurred at the beginning of September 2024, after Hamas murdered six Israeli captives in Rafah, because their guards spotted IDF activity close to the tunnel where they were being held. Following the discovery of the bodies, a large public furor erupted in light of the vividness of the tragedy, and also because the emptiness in Netanyahu's claim that only more military pressure would being about the captives' release was dramatized.
A rally in Tel Aviv demanding the release of hostages who were kidnapped during the deadly October 7 on Israel.Credit: Thomas Peter/ REUTERS
The prime minister, who has no interest in a hostage deal that entails Israeli concessions, was fearful of losing control of the situation. That was the genesis of the Philadelphi Corridor episode. Netanyahu started to promote urgently the argument that Israel must on no account withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor, because if the IDF left the result would be the immediate resumption of weapons smuggling to Hamas. It was clear that Hamas would not accept this approach.
To torpedo the negotiations, and to dispel the pressure on Netanyahu to compromise, his office launched a campaign aimed at the international media. From there, it's suspected, the need arose for the leaks that were made to the German newspaper Bild and to the British weekly The Jewish Chronicle. The leaks consisted of a mixture of classified intelligence, manipulations of the information and sheer inventions. Netanyahu and his wife afterward cited those reports to justify the fact that no progress was being made on a deal and to blame Hamas exclusively for the negotiating stalemate.
From the legal angle, the Shin Bet investigation is focusing on the theft of the original material, not on the manipulation that was done with it. Intelligence at one of the highest and most sensitive levels was leaked in the episode, and which, ironically, came from a unit in the IDF's Information Security Department. One of the unit's responsibilities is for the security of sources of information, and accordingly it has rare access to the army's various intelligence databases. In this affair four intelligence personnel and one of Netanyahu's spokespersons, Eli Feldstein, were taken into custody (one of the intelligence personnel was later released).
Netanyahu's attitude toward his staff is wholly instrumental. Before the gag order on publishing Feldstein's name was lifted, the Prime Minister's Office tried (futilely) to deny that Feldstein had been employed there. This is driving the Feldstein family crazy – they are very worried about their incarcerated son. Feldstein (full disclosure: I've known him since his army days and am fond of him) grew up as a Haredi, but enlisted in the army and served in several quite important posts, among them assistant to the head of the Planning Directorate in the General Staff, and spokesperson of the Judea and Samaria Division.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Eli Feldstein, the suspect in the leak case, this year.Credit: Roi Avraham / GPO
After his discharge he was briefly the spokesperson for the minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir. Immediately at the start of the war he joined Netanyahu's bureau as a spokesperson on his behalf who worked primarily with the military correspondents. His practical mission was clear to everyone who followed his actions: to scatter information that would serve Netanyahu's efforts to divert from himself the fire around the investigation of October 7 and afterward of the hostages affair.
The arrested spokesperson is a bit of a street cat, effective and active, someone with a finger in every pie. Feldstein always worked around the clock and displayed total commitment to his commanders and managers. As happens with aides and spokespersons, those traits come in a single package with a powerful desire to curry favor and with an absence of restraints when it comes to ethical issues. For quite a few years, Feldstein played too close to the edge; this time there's a suspicion that he crossed it. And once that happened, he now discovers that he's on his own.
Even the way he was employed in the PMO isn't clear, and one wonders how he will pay for the legal defense he will undoubtedly need. On Thursday, after nine days of interrogation, Feldstein was allowed to meet with his lawyer, Oded Savoray, for the first time. Col. (res.) Savoray is experienced in security affairs. Netanyahu's office will not be pleased that during the period of the regime coup, Savoray was in the forefront of a major High Court of Justice petition against the annulment of the reasonableness criterion and its implications for security personnel.
When the first details of the investigation were made public, army personnel recalled how, throughout the war, Feldstein and other spokespersons in the Prime Minister's Office pressured them to arrange prestige coverage possibilities for top figures from Bild, the European newspaper most favorably disposed toward Netanyahu. To his friends, the spokesman boasted of his closeness to the prime minister. But there were also others in the decision-making chain, and the question, as always, is what they knew and whether Feldstein acted on his own initiative or only followed orders.
The fact that Feldstein's status in the PMO was not finalized stemmed from a security clearance problem. He failed the Shin Bet's security clearance test and was supposed to have been kept out of the bureau, but somehow was allowed to go on working there. It's not the first time. Similar difficulties accompanied part of his period of service in the army, although many spokespersons tend to get entangled like this. Their activity in the gray area vis-à-vis the media often raises an eyebrow when they are required to take a polygraph test or undergo a security check.
The new affair reveals – and not for the first time since the awful intelligence failure that enabled the October 7 massacre – another serious professional problem in Military Intelligence. In the past two decades the organization took pride in a strategy, almost an ideology, of toppling internal walls to enable synchronization of the work of the various units and a mutual contribution between them. Now that facilitating and amateurish approach has led to suspicion of the theft of highly classified information – and by those who are supposed to be in charge of safeguarding it.
That's not the issue that's occupying Netanyahu and his supporters. The line of defense of the other suspects in the case, which started to filter out on Thursday, holds that all they wanted was to bring to the prime minister's attention essential information that had been concealed from him by the top brass in Military Intelligence. "We didn't want to be treated like the noncom, V., from [Unit] 8200, who warned about Hamas' plans on the eve of October 7," one of the detainees maintained.
Concurrently, with timing that is not random, coalition MKs are promoting the establishment of an external control unit for the intelligence apparatus. That could be a welcome initiative, but we need to look at the details. Under the proposal, the unit will be directly subordinate to the prime minister; in other words, he will have authority-bypassing access to raw intelligence, and also control of the material. The excuse, of course, is "war on the conception," which, as is known, everyone except Netanyahu succumbed to on the eve of the massacre.
The reports about the two latest investigations indicate that they are getting close to the group around Netanyahu. In other circumstances – before the affairs, the trials and the war – we might have said they were starting to endanger Netanyahu himself. That's very likely not the true situation this time. The events of this week lead to conclusions in a completely different direction.
First, Gallant's dismissal was orchestrated for prime time, five minutes before the 8 P.M. Channel 12 News, both as a diversion from the investigations and as a threat to the other gatekeepers. Second, and this is perhaps the true tailwind that Trump's victory is giving Netanyahu, we have here a clear example of how an offender who was already convicted can evade justice and cling to power, over time. What works in Washington might work in Jerusalem, too, despite Netanyahu's upcoming testimony in his trial, in less than a month. After this past week, it's hard to say that the fear cast by the rule of law still touches the prime minister.