The dispute between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant over the war in Gaza is the latest in a series of clashes over the past 18 months that have brought government unity to the breaking point. Netanyahu said on Monday that the two can work together "as long as there is trust", but that all ministers are obliged to respect the decisions of the cabinet. "And that is what is being tested now," he said at the press conference. He rejected calls by Galant and others in the security establishment to accept the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip's southern border area as a condition for a ceasefire agreement with the Hamas militant group.
Quarrels broke out several times between Netanyahu and Galant, who during his 35-year military career attained the rank of general, reminds Reuters. Although a hardliner on security issues, including Hamas, Galant spoke openly with disdain about Netanyahu's proclaimed goal of "total victory" in Gaza, which he dismissed as "nonsense."
However, the twisted calculus of Israeli politics since the start of the Gaza war has kept the two together, preventing Netanyahu from firing Galant and preventing Galant from resigning.
Last year, during protests over Netanyahu's initiative to limit the power of the Supreme Court, Galant broke off his cooperation and publicly opposed the plan, which he said was so deeply divisive that it threatened national security. Netanyahu fired him, but reversed that decision when Israelis took to the streets in one of the largest protests in the country's history. Galant, who has been in politics for ten years, refuses to leave his post.
"He considers the role of his life to be what he is doing right now, as defense minister in what he believes is the most important war since the War of Independence," Gajil Talshir, an expert on Israeli politics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told Reuters, using a term that is often used in Israel for the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. “There's no way he's going to leave.”
The conflict is partly due to the structure of the right-wing coalition that Netanyahu formed after the 2022 elections, which depends on two nationalist religious parties led by hardline ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Without their support, the government would fall, and they would be able to freely express their hostility to Galant and others in the defense establishment, who they consider too soft on the Palestinians and especially Hamas.
In an indication of the sour atmosphere in the cabinet, at a news conference on Monday, Netanyahu displayed what he said was a note containing instructions from a Hamas commander found by Israeli troops in Gaza. One of the points reads: "Apply psychological pressure on Galant".
The latest clash came after the bodies of six Israeli hostages were found, killed in a tunnel in southern Gaza hours before they were found by Israeli troops. This caused mass demonstrations whose participants demanded an agreement on the exchange of hostages, which Galant also demanded. He said that although it was too late for the hostages found in the tunnel, the others still in captivity must be returned home.
Like Netanyahu, Galant's career has been marked by the events of October 7 last year, when gunmen led by Hamas killed around 1.200 Israelis and foreigners and took 253 hostages in an attack on communities near Gaza. Two days later, Galant said the price Gaza would pay would "change reality for generations" and that Israel was imposing a total blockade, banning food and fuel imports. He described Israel's enemies as "human beasts."
Since then, he has been more cautious than Netanyahu, calling on him to draw up a plan for managing Gaza after the war and rejecting any suggestion that the Israeli army should remain as an occupying force.
While Israeli forces continue to fight in Gaza, they are on high alert for a possible war with Iran-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and are heavily engaged against armed Palestinian factions in the occupied West Bank, with military commanders aware of the are a burden to their soldiers.
Both Netanyahu and Galant face the threat of international arrest warrants over the Gaza campaign - in which authorities in the enclave say more than 40.000 Palestinians have been killed - after a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague made such a request.
The possibility has sparked outrage in Israel, but Reuters points out that the issue of responsibility for the military and security failures that allowed the Oct. 7 attack to happen lies at the root of much of the tension in Israeli politics.
Last month, Galant said that both he and Netanyahu should be under investigation, supporting criticism of the prime minister for not accepting responsibility for one of the biggest disasters in the country's history.
Any such investigation would, among other things, significantly establish the guilt of the Minister of Defense.
"He knows he will have to leave. He wants to leave as a successful defense minister who led Israel to more secure borders," said Talshir.
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