Yoav Gallant Has Shown Defiance. Will He Again?

 

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Yoav Gallant Has Shown Defiance. Will He Again?

 

By Dahlia Scheindlin

Dr. Scheindlin, a political analyst and a columnist at Haaretz English, wrote from Tel Aviv.

June 2, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/02/opinion/yoav-gallant-israel-defense.html

 

Last month, Yoav Gallant told Israelis that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was leading the nation astray. Mr. Gallant, the defense minister and a member of the war cabinet, accused him of letting the nation drift into a military and civilian occupation of Gaza, which would cost Israel “blood and many victims, with no aim.” He challenged Mr. Netanyahu to rule that option out.

 

In a government known for ironclad loyalty to the prime minister, and in the heightened intensity of war, Mr. Gallant’s statement made headlines. It also made him into a two-time whistle-blower of sorts.

 

In March 2023, Mr. Gallant became the most prominent member of the governing coalition to publicly call for a halt to Mr. Netanyahu’s attempt to undermine the judiciary, an effort that he said was harming the country’s security. When Mr. Netanyahu tried to fire him, hundreds of thousands of protesting Israelis brought the country to a standstill, and Mr. Gallant became an instant symbol of a bulwark against what the protesters viewed as an autocratic putsch.

 

At both these moments, liberal Israelis have grasped at the possibility that Mr. Gallant could be a lifeline out of national perdition. They hoped his stance against the judicial reforms would embolden other coalition members to halt the process, or even topple the government. His more recent challenge of Mr. Netanyahu conveyed that he might take a stand against a government poised to fulfill the fantasies of its religious extremists, who would conquer and resettle Gaza, while transforming Israel unrecognizably.

 

In fact, neither of Mr. Gallant’s dramatic interventions have actually stopped the policies he criticized. He was, and continues to be, a key figure in the government that brought Israel to this point, a situation underscored last month when the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court called for his arrest on suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including using starvation as a weapon of war. The prosecutor also sought warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and three Hamas leaders. The world’s international courts don’t see Yoav Gallant as a whistle-blower, but as an architect of Israel’s policies.

 

Israel is facing a stark choice about its future, and Mr. Gallant stands to play a critical role in the path it takes. Does he represent a genuine alternative to the populist leadership that is threatening to turn Israel into a pariah state, as he has seemed to in these key moments? Or, as his track record also suggests, does he in fact represent the status quo?

 

Many Israeli Jews hope Mr. Gallant will push Israel toward this alternate path.

 

The course of the war will also determine which path Israel eventually takes. On Friday, President Biden said he had endorsed a “comprehensive new proposal” by Israel for a cease-fire and hostage release, although the prospects for the plan are uncertain, as are the possible consequences of Biden’s proposals for the stability of Netanyahu’s coalition.

 

Mr. Gallant, 65, built his first career in the heartland of the Israeli military establishment. He was born in Jaffa, close to the sea, and when he was drafted for mandatory military service in 1976, joined Flotilla 13, the Israeli Navy’s elite commando unit. Elite military units in Israel can be compared to America’s Ivy League colleges. Soldiers must meet arduous requirements to enter and remain. The unit forms their identity and establishes communities for decades to come, and children often follow parents into special units, as did Mr. Gallant’s son.

 

Mr. Gallant rose to become the Flotilla 13 commander. More promotions followed. In 2002, he became military secretary for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and a few years later, the head of Israel’s Southern Command. He was tapped in 2010 to become Israel’s next military chief of staff. But media reports of alleged land-use irregularities regarding his opulent villa cost him the coveted job. He was later partly cleared of charges, though legal wrangling over fines went on for years with little public interest.

 

Mr. Gallant entered politics in 2015, joining the center-right of the Israeli political spectrum by signing up with a new party, Kulanu (“All of Us”). Kulanu had broken away from Mr. Netanyahu’s increasingly populist and illiberal Likud to focus on cost-of-living issues. At the time, his path resembled that of many other ex-military figures in Israel, who often enter politics as pragmatists and gravitate to centrist parties or try to appear above Israel’s shrill ideological fray. Colleagues viewed him as committed almost exclusively to security matters.

 

Several ministerial portfolios fell to him in the coming years, including construction and housing, and later, education. At first, he displayed what many Israelis would consider to be a centrist line. In an opinion essay for The New York Times in 2016, when he was the minister of housing and construction, he wrote of investments that he advanced in Arab Israeli communities in partnership with a left-wing Arab Israeli lawmaker, noting that Israel’s declaration of independence guarantees equality. But in the same article, he justified his support for banning a branch of Israel’s Islamic Movement, claiming it had incited violence.

 

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, his views early on were ambiguous. Mr. Gallant in 2015 reportedly acknowledged the possibility of a demilitarized Palestinian state and supported territorial contiguity for a future “independent entity.” But the comments were reported nearly a decade ago, in a speech at a retirement home; in recent years, he has roundly rejected the idea.

 

When elections were called in late 2018, Mr. Gallant moved to Netanyahu’s Likud, a move that seemed to combine ambition and ideological fit. When Mr. Netanyahu was indicted the next year on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, he openly attacked the judiciary, as his governments had been doing for much of the decade.

 

Israel sank into political turmoil, undergoing five elections since 2019. But in late 2022, far-right parties loyal to Mr. Netanyahu won a decisive majority and Mr. Gallant was named defense minister. Within days, the new government introduced the now infamous plans to reduce judicial independence and transform Israel’s constitutional order. The population sprang into the streets.

 

One of the most vocal groups in the protests was Brothers and Sisters in Arms, a group of military reservists. Eyal Naveh, one of its founders and leaders, told me that most of the members came originally from elite units, like Mr. Gallant. The reservists begged the government to stop the legislation, including in direct appeals to Mr. Gallant as defense minister, Mr. Naveh recalled. “For 13 weeks,” he continued, Mr. Gallant said nothing. “We stood at his house and said, ‘How can you not speak to us?’ But he was mute — hiding, or he fled, but he said nothing while the country was burning.”

 

Mr. Gallant broke his silence in late March, calling for a pause of the legislation and saying that the social turmoil it caused had left Israel vulnerable at a time of numerous serious security threats. The protesters were elated in the hope he would be their champion. Ilan Paz, Mr. Gallant’s former deputy from Flotilla 13, said in an interview that while he had expected his onetime commander to take a stand earlier, he felt he recognized the old Gallant.

 

Mr. Netanyahu’s office immediately announced that the prime minister had decided to dismiss him.

 

But the heady drama fell into an anticlimax. Mr. Netanyahu backtracked on his decision and Mr. Gallant fell into line. As a critical vote on the judicial overhaul approached in July, the defense minister tried to soften the bill before voting for it anyway, while stating that he would respect the Supreme Court if it struck the law down. The protests surged once again.

 

Needless to say, Oct. 7 changed everything. The weekly demonstrations were suspended abruptly as Israel swung into wartime action. Tens of thousands of Israelis were displaced near Gaza and in the north, where Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon and a bitter foe of Israel, was sending missiles. Profound trauma set in.

 

Early in the war, Mr. Gallant reportedly advocated a major strike on Hezbollah in response to its attacks, and he has threatened military escalation with Hezbollah regularly in recent months. He also used the phrase “human animals” in referring to the siege of Gaza City, announcing that Israel was cutting off electricity, food and fuel to the area — all words that would later appear before the International Court of Justice (which is separate from the I.C.C.) as evidence of Israel’s intention to commit genocide.

 

Oct. 7 also spelled trouble for the government. Polls soon showed the original coalition losing one-third of its support and Likud at one point losing up to half its votes, although both measures have recovered somewhat. Polls also show that the public is losing faith in the government’s promise to win the war. More than 70 percent of Israelis repeatedly tell pollsters they want early elections and a majority want Mr. Netanyahu out. Opposition parties are regularly polling at around 70 seats out of 120.

 

Many Israelis see in Mr. Gallant both the government and its failures, as well as an essential, experienced military figure at a time of national emergency. But a survey by the Israel Democracy Institute in December found that of preferred prime ministers after the war, he ranked a dismal 10th, with 0.4 percent of Israelis believing he was the right choice.

 

Even after Mr. Gallant’s open challenge to Netanyahu in mid-May, polling shows a mixed picture: the majority do not want Mr. Netanyahu to fire him, and a Pew poll found that while a majority of Israelis feel favorably about him, only a small percentage indicate that they would consider voting for him in a separate party.

 

Mr. Gallant can’t bring this government down on his own: At least five defectors are needed to end the original 64-member majority. It’s unlikely he has the personal clout to persuade Likud lawmakers to defect. If he were to challenge Mr. Netanyahu in a primary contest for party leader before elections, Mazal Mualem, a longtime political correspondent and author of “Cracking The Netanyahu Code,” believes he will fail, given the hard-core loyalty of Likud’s voters.

 

Mr. Gallant may already be plotting his next move. Ms. Mualem describes him as “fearless and calculating.” In an interview, she pointed to the fact that he recently told a Likud faction meeting that the party must follow the legacy of former Prime Minister Menachem Begin — a firebrand now revered as a hawkish liberal democrat — rather than Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist who has encouraged Palestinian emigration from Gaza. Mr. Ben-Gvir is widely understood as supporting expulsion.

 

In other words, Mr. Gallant may already be consciously cultivating his pragmatic political image again.

 

Mr. Gallant may also hope to benefit from the company he keeps in the war cabinet, including the ex-military figures Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot (who is formally an observer in the war cabinet).

 

Mr. Gantz’s party has been leading in polls because the public views him as a unifying figure who crossed from the opposition to join the government in a national emergency. He recently issued an ultimatum to leave the wartime government if Mr. Netanyahu fails to advance clear plans for the future. Mr. Gallant surely hopes the public will see him, too, as a leader who puts security and the country before politics. But unlike Mr. Gantz, he has stopped short of an open threat to break with Mr. Netanyahu or the government.

 

True leadership means taking risks. Mr. Gantz has also challenged Mr. Netanyahu on Gaza’s future, and is a potential rival of the prime minister. He and Mr. Gallant have both proposed plans for the postwar future of Gaza, but where is their plan for the future identity of Israel? Will it be an expansionist conquest state, serving either a messianic theocracy or the false notion that a forever war can bring security? Or will these cooler-headed leaders conclude that permanent conquest only means killing more Palestinians — and perhaps severely harming Israel as well?

 

Israel needs pragmatists who can win elections, to be sure. It also needs visionaries, and the defense minister has not yet shown himself to be one. Mr. Gallant has raised red flags about the worst excesses of the government he served, but he hasn’t walked out. His defiance has been fleeting and reactive, not a forward march; he has yet to offer Israel a path to a better future.

 

Dahlia Scheindlin, a political analyst and a columnist at Haaretz English, is the author of “The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled.”