Gallant will be replaced by Foreign Minister Israel Katz, while Minister without Portfolio Gideon Sa’ar will replace Katz in the Foreign Ministry.
In a terse letter that the Prime Minister’s Office said was handed to Gallant during an 8 p.m. meeting, Netanyahu informed him that his tenure would end “48 hours from the receipt of this letter.”
“I would like to thank you for your service as defense minister,” the one-sentence letter concluded.
Following the brief interaction, Netanyahu left the room and recorded the video in which he announced the firing of his longtime Likud party rival, Channel 12 news reported.
“Unfortunately, although in the first months of the war there was trust and there was very fruitful work, during the last months this trust cracked between me and the defense minister,” said Netanyahu in the video statement.
He said that the two disagreed on the management of the war, and that Gallant had made decisions and statements that contradicted cabinet decisions.
The premier also accused Gallant of indirectly aiding Israel’s enemies.
“I made many attempts to bridge these gaps, but they kept getting wider,” he 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.”
The “crisis of faith” with the defense minister “does not enable the proper continuation of the [military] campaign,” Netanyahu continued.
He said that most members of the government and cabinet were in agreement with him “that this cannot continue. In light of this, I decided today to end the tenure of the defense minister.”
Tuesday’s announcement is the second time in under two years that Netanyahu has fired Gallant from the post of defense minister.
In March 2023, Netanyahu fired Gallant a day after the latter called for pausing the legislation process of the government’s contentious judicial overhaul plans, which he said caused divisions that posed a threat to Israel’s security.
He was reinstated less than a month later, however, and was at the helm of the Defense Ministry when Hamas committed its deadly terror assault in southern Israel on October 7 last year and remained in his post throughout the subsequent war in the Gaza Strip, the fighting on the northern border and the ground operation in southern Lebanon.
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.
He hinted strongly that Israel should be prioritizing a deal to get the 101 remaining hostages out of Gaza, even if doing so would mean Hamas remains in the Strip.
“Whoever dies among the hostages can never be returned. There isn’t and will never be atonement for abandoning the hostages,” he said. “It will become a mark of Cain on the forehead of Israeli society, and on those who are leading this mistaken path.”
In a statement of his own, Katz, also a member of Netanyahu’s Likud, welcomed his new appointment as defense minister but made no mention of Gallant.
“I thank Prime Minister Netanyahu for the trust he placed in me in appointing me to the position of minister of defense,” Katz posted on X. “I accept this responsibility with a sense of mission and a deep commitment to the security of the State of Israel and its citizens.”
He vowed that they would “work together to advance the defense establishment to victory against our enemies and to achieve the goals of the war: the return of all the hostages as the most important mission, the destruction of Hamas in Gaza, the defeat of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the curbing of Iranian aggression and the safe return of the residents of the north and south to their homes.”
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