Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, dismissed on Tuesday, was the strategist of the total war against Hamas and Hezbollah before becoming too cumbersome for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, by demanding the conscription of the ultra-Orthodox.
A former general turned politician, Mr. Gallant, 65, led with an iron fist the Israeli military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israeli territory on October 7 2023.
Mr Gallant ordered a “complete siege – no electricity, no food, no water, no gas” on Gaza on October 9 as the Israeli army pounded the overpopulated Palestinian territory with airstrikes.
He then imposed himself in the war against Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon, determined to bring home the approximately 60,000 inhabitants of northern Israel displaced by the rocket fire of the armed movement, which opened a front against Israel since October 8, 2023, in support of Hamas.
“Military action” being “the only way to guarantee” their return, according to Mr. Gallant, Israel launched an air offensive at the end of September, then land offensive in southern Lebanon, against the strongholds of Hezbollah, whose leader it killed. leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in a large-scale bombing of Beirut on September 27.
“Painful concessions”
But within the war cabinet, relations with Mr. Netanyahu had deteriorated over the past year over the conduct of the war in Gaza.
Mr. Gallant was strongly opposed to any Israeli military control or responsibility over the governance of the Gaza Strip after the war.
At the end of October, he also affirmed that Israel would have to make “painful concessions” to free the 97 hostages still held captive in Gaza, because “not all objectives can be achieved through military operations alone.”
A position likely to make Mr. Netanyahu appear as a diehard who does not care about the fate of the hostages.
The call-up orders launched by the army for 10,000 men from the ultra-Orthodox community, some of whom are traditionally exempt from compulsory military service, will have been another snub for the Prime Minister.
After a year of war and while reservists are exhausted by long periods under the flag, the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews has aroused the wrath of ultra-Orthodox parties, key allies of the Prime Minister's coalition.
Lumberjack in Alaska
During his political career that began in 2015, Mr. Gallant was also a major supporter of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, considered illegal under international law, and which today house around 490,000 settlers.
Born on November 8, 1958 in Jaffa, near Tel Aviv, this son of Polish Jews who survived the Shoah had a long career in the army. General in 2002, he became the military attaché of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
An officer in the naval commandos of “Shayetet-13” (Flottilla-13), he participated in an operation in Lebanon in 1978 against the Palestinian Fatah movement, during which many Palestinian fighters were killed.
From 1982 to 1984, he took a break from the military to become a logger in Alaska.
Commander of the military division controlling the Gaza Strip in the late 1990s, he notably led the unilateral withdrawal of the army and the evacuation of settlers from the Palestinian territory in the summer of 2005.
He also commanded Operation “Cast Lead” in the Gaza Strip at the end of 2008-beginning of 2009, which killed 1,440 Palestinians and 13 Israelis and which led to Israel being accused by the Human Rights Council of possible “war crimes”.
Appointed chief of staff in 2010, Yoav Gallant was ultimately removed from this post following allegations in the press of illegal appropriation of land. The case had been closed.
After the army, he briefly ran a drilling company owned by French-Israeli tycoon Beny Steinmetz, before entering politics.
MP for the Koulanou party (center-right) in 2015 then Minister of Housing, he joined the Likud (right) in 2019, becoming Minister of Immigration, then of Education, in the governments of Mr. Netanyahu.
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