MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Netanyahu sacks Defense Minister amid breach of trust

Israel Katz is said to be of Netanyahu's utmost confidence

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Tuesday sacked Defense Minister Yoav Gallant amid allegations of security leaks that could have jeopardized Tel Aviv's war efforts against Iran and its terrorist proxies Hamas and Hezbollah.

Netanyahu's move came hours ahead of Donald Trump's imminent return to the White House. The Republican leader is reported to have once told Netanyahu regarding the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East that “you do what you have to do.”

According to Israeli media, disagreements and lack of mutual trust that allegedly helped the enemy were the reasons behind Netanyahu's decision. “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,” Netanyahu said in a video statement. “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,” he added.

Gallant, who said on X that “the security of the State of Israel always was, and will always remain my life’s mission,” will be replaced by Foreign Minister Israel Katz. His replacement at the helm of Israel's diplomacy was yet to be announced. Netanyahu has held it in the past concurrently with his position as Prime 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 during when Hamas' Oct. 7 massacre took place.