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Israel’s New Defense Minister: Netanyahu Loyalist, Settlers’ Friend 

A file photo taken on March 26, 2010 shows Israeli officer general Yoav Galant, chief of the south command, during a press conference near the border with the Gaza Strip. (AFP)
A file photo taken on March 26, 2010 shows Israeli officer general Yoav Galant, chief of the south command, during a press conference near the border with the Gaza Strip. (AFP)
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Israel’s New Defense Minister: Netanyahu Loyalist, Settlers’ Friend 

A file photo taken on March 26, 2010 shows Israeli officer general Yoav Galant, chief of the south command, during a press conference near the border with the Gaza Strip. (AFP)
A file photo taken on March 26, 2010 shows Israeli officer general Yoav Galant, chief of the south command, during a press conference near the border with the Gaza Strip. (AFP)

Israel's new defense minister Yoav Galant is a former general, a staunch ally of Benjamin Netanyahu and a vocal advocate of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. 

In the military, the 64-year-old oversaw Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and later commanded the "Operation Cast Lead" offensive against its Hamas rulers in 2008-2009.  

Since entering politics in 2015, he has served as minister for education, housing and immigration -- and has been a prominent backer of Israel's settlements, regarded as illegal under international law, that are today home to some 475,000 settlers. 

Some observers fear a radical change in policy on the occupied West Bank under Netanyahu's new government. 

Shlomo Neeman, who heads the Yesha Council, an umbrella group representing Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, welcomed Galant ahead of his appointment on Thursday. 

"Yoav Galant is a man who has done a lot for the settlement of Judea and Samaria," he said, using the Jewish biblical terms for the West Bank. 

Ahead of his nomination, Galant's predecessor Benny Gantz spoke with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, stressing "the important ties forged between the Israeli defense establishment and political echelon and the Palestinian Authority".  

Galant, born in the Mediterranean port of Jaffa in 1958 to Polish Holocaust survivors, was a career soldier.  

He was an officer in the elite marine unite known as Flotilla-13 when it carried out an operation against the Palestinian Fatah movement in Lebanon in 1978.  

The unit killed around 20 Palestinian gunmen, etching the operation into the Israeli military's history books.  

Top general  

Between 1982 and 1984, Galant took a break from the army to become a lumberjack in Alaska.  

Galant reached the rank of general in 2002, serving as former prime minister Ariel Sharon's military attaché.  

Galant would later rise to become commander of the southern military command, overseeing Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, including the evacuation of 8,000 settlers from the Palestinian enclave. 

He then commanded Israel's "Operation Cast Lead", a 22-day operation in Gaza that killed 1,440 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.  

A United Nations report accused both Israel and Hamas of war crimes during that conflict.  

Nominated as the army's chief of staff in 2010, Galant was mired in scandal over the appropriation of public land to build his house.  

An investigative report led to a petition in the supreme court which did not result in criminal charges, but posed potential legal problems to his appointment.  

Instead, Benny Gantz, whom Galant now succeeds at the defense ministry, was selected.  

After leaving the army, he became director of a drilling company owned by Franco-Israeli tycoon Beny Steinmetz, but resigned in 2014 to enter politics.  

In 2015, Galant served as housing minister as part of the center-right Kulanu party, though he later joined Netanyahu's right-wing Likud in 2019.  

Under previous Netanyahu governments, Galant served as both immigration and education minister between 2019 and 2021. 

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On Lebanon Border, Israel and Hezbollah’s Deadly Game of Patience

Smoke is seen as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is intercepted following its launch from Lebanon, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, at Kibbutz Eilon in northern Israel, July 23, 2024. (Reuters)
Smoke is seen as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is intercepted following its launch from Lebanon, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, at Kibbutz Eilon in northern Israel, July 23, 2024. (Reuters)
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On Lebanon Border, Israel and Hezbollah’s Deadly Game of Patience

Smoke is seen as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is intercepted following its launch from Lebanon, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, at Kibbutz Eilon in northern Israel, July 23, 2024. (Reuters)
Smoke is seen as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is intercepted following its launch from Lebanon, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, at Kibbutz Eilon in northern Israel, July 23, 2024. (Reuters)

In deserted villages and communities near the southern Lebanon border, Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters have watched each other for months, shifting and adapting in a battle for the upper hand while they wait to see if a full scale war will come.

Ever since the start of the Gaza war last October, the two sides have exchanged daily barrages of rockets, artillery, missile fire and air strikes in a standoff that has just stopped short of full-scale war.

Tens of thousands have been evacuated from both sides of the border, and hopes that children may be able to return for the start of the new school year in September appear to have been dashed following an announcement by Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch on Tuesday that conditions would not allow it.

"The war is almost the same for the past nine months," Lieutenant Colonel Dotan, an Israeli officer, who could only be identified by his first name. "We have good days of hitting Hezbollah and bad days where they hit us. It's almost the same, all year, all the nine months."

As the summer approaches its peak, the smoke trails of drones and rockets in the sky have become a daily sight, with missiles regularly setting off brush fires in the thickly wooded hills along the border.

Israeli strikes have killed nearly 350 Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon and more than 100 civilians, including medics, children and journalists, while 10 Israeli civilians, a foreign agricultural worker and 20 Israeli soldiers have been killed.

Even so, as the cross border firing has continued, Israeli forces have been training for a possible offensive in Lebanon which would dramatically increase the risk of a wider regional war, potentially involving Iran and the United States.

That risk was underlined at the weekend when the Yemen-based Houthis, a militia which like Hezbollah is backed by Iran, sent a drone to Tel Aviv where it caused a blast that killed a man and prompted Israel to launch a retaliatory raid the next day.

Standing in his home kibbutz of Eilon, where only about 150 farmers and security guards remain from a normal population of 1,100, Lt. Colonet Dotan said the two sides have been testing each other for months, in a constantly evolving tactical battle.

"This war taught us patience," said Dotan. "In the Middle East, you need patience."

He said Israeli troops had seen an increasing use of Iranian drones, of a type frequently seen in Ukraine, as well as Russian-made Kornet anti tank missiles which were increasingly targeting houses as Israeli tank forces adapted their own tactics in response.

"Hezbollah is a fast-learning organization and they understood that UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) are the next big thing and so they went and bought and got trained in UAVs," he said.

Israel had responded by adapting its Iron Dome air defense system and focusing its own operations on weakening Hezbollah's organizational structure by attacking its experienced commanders, such as Ali Jaafar Maatuk, a field commander in the elite Radwan forces unit who was killed last week.

"So that's another weak point we found. We target them and we look for them on a daily basis," he said.

Even so, as the months have passed, the wait has not been easy for Israeli troops brought up in a doctrine of maneuver and rapid offensive operations.

"When you're on defense, you can't defeat the enemy. We understand that, we have no expectations," he said, "So we have to wait. It's a patience game."