The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has dismissed this Sunday his Defense Minister, Yoav Gallantwho on Saturday publicly advocated pausing the processing of the controversial judicial reform to give room for dialogue. Netanyahu has published a brief statement announcing Gallant’s departure in which he explains that he has lost confidence in him because “he has gone behind the government’s back”, reports the Israeli press. Netanyahu is on an official visit to the UK. Gallant remains a party deputy Likud of Netanyahu, but it is not known if he will continue to be part of the Government, the result of a complex balance of forces between the right-wing and far-right parties that make up the coalition that supports Netanyahu.
After the news broke, thousands of Israelis poured into cities across the country to protest Netanyahu’s decision. Hundreds of the protesters burned tires, placed barriers, rocks and iron at the intersection of Kaplan and Highway 20. Police reported that they lit dozens of bonfires in the middle of the street along the Ayalon Highway.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid has criticized Netanyahu for dismissing Gallant “only because he warned him of the threat posed to Israel’s security” by his judicial reform. “It is an anti-Zionist government that goes against national security and ignores the warnings of all those in charge of the security apparatus”he has argued. “The prime minister of Israel is a danger to the security of the State of Israel (…). Netanyahu can throw out Gallant, but he cannot throw out reality and he cannot throw out the people of Israel, who are rising up against the madness of the coalition”, has added.
After Gallant’s removal Thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets of the main Israeli cities to protest the decision. In Tel Aviv, protesters have blocked the Kaplan crossing and have reoccupied the Ayalon highway, the usual scene of clashes between activists and police. In Jerusalem, Beersheba and Haifa there have also been protests with thousands of attendees.
there has also been a rally of about 300 people in front of Gallant’s home to express their support for him, reports the newspaper ‘Yedioth Aharonoth’. Reservists have concentrated on Sunday morning next to the house of the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, in the settlement of Kiryat Arba, in Hebron, West Bank. Two of them were arrested after trying to enter Ben-Gvir’s house. SUCCESSOR Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter seems the favorite to succeed Gallant.
Dichter was director of the secret service for the interior of Israel and the Palestinian territories, the Shin Bet. However, Dichter has also raised his doubts about the risks to the cohesion and security of the country that going ahead with the judicial reform process entails. Economy Minister Nir Barkat could also fill the post. Gallant broke on Saturday the Israeli government’s monolithic defense of the controversial judicial reform promoted by Netanyahu and that has plunged the country into a deepA political crisis due to the protests of the opposition, which denounces a threat to the division of powers. “I have never seen the level of hate and pain that I see now.
The division in society reaches as far as the Army and this poses an immediate and tangible danger to the security of the State. I’m not going to give in on this. We need to change the judiciary, but important changes must be made through dialogue. The legislative process must be stopped,” Gallant said in a televised address. Gallant has stressed that “Israel’s security is the goal of my life.”Even now I am willing to take the risk and pay the price. The threats that surround us are immense, near and far.”, has pointed at the beginning of his speech. In recent weeks, Gallan himself has maintained contacts with military commanders, he explained. “He worries me what I have heard,” he pointed out.
The National Security Minister, the far-right Itamar Ben Gvir, immediately called for Gallant’s removal of Netanyahu. “I call on the Prime Minister to remove Gallant, who was appointed with votes from the right, but who has caved in to pressure from those who have threatened rejection (to voluntarily serve in the Armed Forces) and try to stop this important reform,” he snapped.
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