Yoav Gallant

Yoav Gallant (born November 8, 1958, Jaffa, Tel Aviv–Yafo, Israel) is an Israeli politician who served as Israel’s defense minister (2022–24) during the first year of the Israel-Hamas War. He was one of three decision-making members of the war cabinet, alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz.

Early years

Gallant grew up in Jaffa, the ancient port city that is now part of Tel Aviv–Yafo. He is the son of Fruma Gallant, a nurse who had survived the Holocaust and arrived in Palestine in 1947 on the SS Exodus, and Michael Gallant, who had fought in World War II in Europe and in Operation Yoav in the Negev during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which secured Israel’s existence after fighting off several Arab armies. His father named him Yoav in honor of that battle. Young Gallant spent his early years living with his grandparents in a small apartment in Jaffa. His father died when Gallant was 17.

Career

In 1976 Gallant was drafted into mandatory military service, and he served in the Israeli navy elite commando unit Flotilla 13. After a half dozen years, he went to Alaska for two years, during which he worked as a lumberjack. Gallant afterward returned to the navy and eventually ascended to commander of Flotilla 13. He became the military secretary for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2002, and in 2005 he headed the nation’s Southern Command. In that capacity, he played a key role in Operation Cast Lead, the first major conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which lasted from late December 2008 to mid-January 2009. Gallant appeared set to become the military’s chief of staff in 2010 before reports surfaced accusing him of appropriating public land (a charge of which he was later cleared). In 2011 he retired from the military as a major general.

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Gallant made his first foray into politics in 2015, when he ran for the Knesset (parliament) with Kulanu, a small center-right party that had left Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party to prioritize socioeconomic reform. His presence on the party list bolstered its security credentials and, during the election, he criticized the Netanyahu-led government for failing to take any action against the threat posed by tunnels built under the Gaza Strip and leading into Israeli territory. Still, Kulanu joined Netanyahu’s government after the election gave Netanyahu a third consecutive term. Gallant was appointed minister of construction and housing.

When elections were held in 2018, Gallant joined Likud. Four years later he became defense minister in Netanyahu’s right-wing government. In 2023, when Netanyahu pushed an unpopular plan to curb the judiciary’s independence, Gallant became the most high-profile member of the government coalition to publicly break with him, arguing that the plan would hurt Israel’s security. Netanyahu announced his intention to fire Gallant but backed off after hundreds of thousands of Israelis flooded the streets in protest of Gallant’s removal.

October 7 attack and Israel-Hamas War

On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people—the deadliest day in Israeli history—and took 240 hostages. Two days later Gallant announced a total blockade of food and fuel imports to Gaza in Israel’s battle against what he controversially called “human animals.” As reported in The Times of Israel on October 8, he warned, “The rules of war have changed. The price the Gaza Strip will pay will be a very heavy price that will change reality for generations.” Israel launched a war against Hamas in Gaza that by early 2024 had killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and leveled more than half of all the buildings there. When the war began, Gallant started dressing in black, the color of mourning.

As the war got underway Netanyahu formed a war cabinet comprising himself, Gallant, and Benny Gantz as its primary decision-making members. Both Gallant and Gantz were publicly critical of Netanyahu’s reluctance to work with them to create an exit strategy for the war. Gallant claimed that Netanyahu was leading the country down a path of occupying the Gaza Strip, and in May 2024, as the war cabinet was on the verge of being dissolved, Gallant said in a speech that Netanyahu’s approach would lead to “blood and many victims, with no aim,” according to The New York Times. Gantz left the war cabinet weeks later, and it was soon after dissolved by Netanyahu, although Gallant remained in Netanyahu’s government as defense minister.

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On May 20, 2024, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, announced that he would seek arrest warrants for Gallant and Netanyahu, as well as Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammad Deif, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The move was denounced by Gallant and others for drawing equivalence between the actions of Israel and those of Hamas. The arrest warrants, valid in more than 120 countries that recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction, were issued on November 21.

Gallant, who was now the main moderating voice in Netanyahu’s far-right cabinet, continued to butt heads after Netanyahu stated in July that Israel must retain control of the Philadelphi Corridor, a border zone between the Gaza Strip and Egypt that the IDF had entered in May. This came after Hamas had conceded its key demand that Israel commit to a permanent end to hostilities. In late August he confronted Netanyahu in a shouting match as the cabinet voted to maintain a military presence in the Philadelphi Corridor, a move which Gallant said was being forced on the IDF at the expense of hostages.

Meanwhile, Gallant carried out a Supreme Court ruling that ended the exemption of ultra-Orthodox Jews from serving in the IDF, a policy that was deeply unpopular among much of Netanyahu’s coalition. On July 18, 2024, Gallant issued orders to draft 3,000 ultra-Orthodox men. Only a fraction of the draftees reported for service and, on November 4, Gallant issued orders to draft an additional 7,000 ultra-Orthodox men in order to meet the IDF’s recruitment goals. The move proved to be the final straw for Netanyahu: on November 5 he sacked Gallant, claiming that a “crisis of trust” had developed between the two men. Gallant was replaced by Israel Katz, who had been serving as foreign minister.