Gallant quits Knesset after being fired as defense minister

(JNS) — Former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant announced his resignation from parliament in a national address on Wednesday evening, almost two months after being fired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“This is a stop on a longer journey that has not yet been completed. As on the battlefield, so is the public service: there are moments when you have to stop to assess the situation and choose the direction of action,” the Knesset lawmaker began.

Although he was leaving the Knesset, Gallant stressed that he was staying within Netanyahu’s Likud Party. “The way of the Likud is my way,” Gallant claimed. “I will continue to fight for the national, ideological and Zionist path of the Likud movement.”

Gallant in his speech took credit for most of the Israeli Defense Forces’ accomplishments since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists invaded the Jewish state and massacred 1,200 people, wounded more than 5,000 others, and took over 250 hostages back to the Gaza Strip.

“As minister of defense, I led the defense establishment throughout 13 months of the war. I charted the way and determined the direction that allowed the State of Israel to reach a military defeat of its enemies in a war on seven fronts,” he said.

He listed the IDF’s accomplishments against Hamas in Gaza, which “ceased to function” as a military organization, in Lebanon against Hezbollah and against the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose loss of its air defenses due to Israeli strikes has left “every point” in the country “vulnerable to Israeli attack.”

The blows Israel delivered led to the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, he noted. “The defense establishment under my leadership created the conditions to achieve all the war’s urgent goals, including the return of the hostages,” he said, describing that aim as “a supreme moral obligation” without which “victory will not be complete.” 

Gallant, who was removed from his position as defense minister by Netanyahu on Nov. 5, said the reason was his insistence on the need for everyone in Israeli society to serve in the army, including the haredim, or ultra-Orthodox, many of whom are exempted from army service as full-time seminary students.

“As the minister of defense in a difficult and protracted war, I understood that the issue of recruiting the haredim is not only a social issue. This is, first and foremost, a necessary security and military need,” he said. 

“Conscripts will be required to serve longer and harder,” he said. “The reservists will also be called to a very long service, which involves personal risk and damage to the family and livelihood.”

“In order to significantly lighten the [burden on] reservists, it is our duty to make sure that all those who are eligible for service from the general public—secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox—are recruited,” Gallant said. 

He criticized a Knesset bill purporting to deal with the issue as granting the majority of young men in the ultra-Orthodox sector a service exemption. 

A war of narratives has surrounded Gallant’s firing. The coalition government disputes Gallant’s account, which was echoed by opposition members, that he was fired for not supporting a so-called “draft-dodger” bill for the ultra-Orthodox. 

Sources close to the prime minister told Ynet that Gallant had bucked Netanyahu on a host of key military decisions, including refusing to support the prime minister’s demand to assassinate Hezbollah terror chief Hassan Nasrallah, opposing IDF presence on the Philadelphi Corridor on the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt, and refusing to let the IDF take charge of the distribution of humanitarian aid to the Strip, which the sources said perpetuates Hamas rule.

Gallant conducted himself in an adversarial matter, they added, frequently holding meetings with heads of organizations subordinate to the prime minister without his presence.

Gallant also avoided coming to Cabinet meetings to which Netanyahu had summoned him.

In a statement released by his office on Nov. 5, Netanyahu said that over the past several months, the trust between himself and Gallant had “begun to crack,” resulting in an “increasingly wide crisis of confidence.”

“Defense Minister Gallant and I had substantial disagreements on the management of the military campaign, disagreements which were accompanied by public statements and actions that contravened the decisions of the Cabinet and the Security Cabinet,” Netanyahu said.

The prime minister said that he had made “multiple attempts to resolve these disagreements,” but they only grew and became public knowledge. “What is even worse, they have reached the knowledge of the enemy; our enemies have taken great delight in these disagreements and have derived much benefit from them,” Netanyahu said.

Their disputes interfered with the military campaign, said the prime minister, an opinion that was shared by virtually the entire Cabinet.