Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fighting publicly with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and is unable to control National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir – not a great look to project as the country awaits a possible Iranian and/or Hezbollah attack and stands on the cusp of a fateful decision regarding a Gaza ceasefire.
Netanyahu’s fighting with Gallant and inability to rein in Ben-Gvir is not just something being made up by his detractors to make the government look bad at a particularly critical and sensitive time. Rather, it is something being trumpeted to the world by the Prime Minister’s Office itself.
On two consecutive days, Monday and Tuesday, the PMO released statements slamming the two senior cabinet ministers.
On Monday, the PMO statement followed comments Gallant reportedly made to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee characterizing Netanyahu’s continuous talk of “absolute victory” as “nonsense.”
Gallant’s criticism of Netanyahu came after the defense minister was challenged by Likud MKs, critical of his handling of the war, as to why he does not order a preemptive attack in the north. Gallant, in his testy response, alluded to reports that soon after October 7 both he and the IDF’s top echelon were in favor of a preemptive attack on Hezbollah, while Netanyahu and the Americans were opposed.
“The conditions for a war in Lebanon today are the opposite of what they were at the beginning of the war,” he said, referring to Hezbollah’s current state of alert and preparedness, which was not the case on October 7.
“I hear all the heroes with the [war] drums, total victory and nonsense like that,” he said. He then reportedly added that courage was not demonstrated when the issue of preemptively hitting Hezbollah was brought up for discussion back in October.
Netanyahu’s office shot back quickly, with his spokesman issuing a stinging statement saying that “when Gallant adopts the anti-Israel narrative, he damages the chances to reach a deal to release the hostages.”
It would have been better, the statement continued, “for him to attack [Hamas head Yahya] Sinwar, who refuses to send a delegation to the [hostage deal] negotiations, and who was and remains the only barrier to a hostage deal.”“Total victory,” the statement read, “also obligates Gallant.”
The fact that during wartime, the Prime Minister’s Office accused the defense minister of adopting an “anti-Israel narrative” is astounding.
The absurdity of the situation was captured in an incisive Guy Morad political cartoon in Yediot Aharonot on Monday showing Netanyahu, wearing a “Total Victory” hat, and Gantz – kicking, punching, and cursing each other. Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah stands in the background behind a rocket under the caption, “Keep going, keep going, don’t pay attention to me.”
Shimon Elkabetz, a veteran radio journalist whose daughter, Sivan, was killed in Kfar Aza on October 7, was even more direct in a Kan Bet interview, calling on the country’s leaders to “just stop.”
“They should stop this nonsense and this fight, it is so ugly,” he said, adding that prime ministers and defense ministers have been at odds throughout the country’s history. “But now, why don’t they just rise above themselves? Families are burying their children; soldiers and reservists are fighting .... For their sake, just shut up, shut up. Work together, keep all this for afterward. Enough of this. Stop.”
What these public spats do is further undermine public confidence in the government’s ability to effectively handle the war, because if there is such bad blood at the top, how can there be effective communication and coordination that is needed manage it.
And the Netanyahu-Gallant incident was just the appetizer. Less than 24 hours later, Ben-Gvir – a perpetual thorn in Netanyahu’s side – went to the Temple Mount on Tisha Be’Av and declared that Jews can pray on the site.
“Our policy is to allow prayer,” he said, a policy which would be a dramatic change from the long-standing status quo at the site which allows for Jews to visit, but not pray there. He, and Minister for the Negev and the Galilee Yitzhak Wasserlauf, then prayed on the Temple Mount, as did many of the more than 1,500 Jews who visited to mark Tisha Be’Av.
Shortly thereafter, for the second time in as many days, the PMO issued a statement admonishing a senior minister, stating that it is the government and the prime minister – not Ben-Gvir – who determine policy on the Temple Mount.
“There is no private policy of any minister – not the national security minister or any other minister – on the Temple Mount. Thus it has been under all governments of Israel. This morning’s incident on the Temple Mount deviated from the status quo,” the statement continued. “Israel’s policy on the Temple Mount has not changed; this is how it has been and this is how it will be.”
In the two months at the end of 2022 between when Netanyahu won the country’s fifth election in 3½ years and was able to form a government, he tried to reassure a world wary of the inclusion of Ben-Gvir into his cabinet by saying repeatedly that this was his government, not Ben-Gvir’s, and that he will have “two hands firmly on the steering wheel.”
Tuesday’s incident shows – again – just how hollow that appraisal turned out to be.
Netanyahu is proving incapable of controlling Ben-Gvir at one of the most delicate moments in the country’s history, and at one of the most sensitive sites on earth. Beyond all the international implications of Ben-Gvir’s antics on Tuesday, which was a higher-profile repeat of what he did last month, declaring while Netanyahu was in Washington that Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount is now allowed, this calls into question Netanyahu’s authority over his government.
With the country at war and exceptionally weighty decisions in the balance, the country needs and deserves to see a working, functioning government with a prime minister firmly in charge. These two incidents show anything but.