After Being Fired, Israel’s Defense Minister Caught in Limbo

In this file photo taken on March 9, 2023, Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant delivers a statement to the press at the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) headquarters near the Ben Gurion airport. (AFP)
In this file photo taken on March 9, 2023, Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant delivers a statement to the press at the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) headquarters near the Ben Gurion airport. (AFP)
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After Being Fired, Israel’s Defense Minister Caught in Limbo

In this file photo taken on March 9, 2023, Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant delivers a statement to the press at the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) headquarters near the Ben Gurion airport. (AFP)
In this file photo taken on March 9, 2023, Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant delivers a statement to the press at the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) headquarters near the Ben Gurion airport. (AFP)

Five days ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to fire his defense minister set off a wave of spontaneous mass protests and a general strike that threatened to paralyze the country, forcing the Israeli leader to suspend his divisive plan to overhaul the judicial system.

But Netanyahu never even sent Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant a formal termination letter, a spokesperson for Netanyahu said. As of Friday, Gallant — whose criticism of Netanyahu's planned judicial changes led to his dismissal — was still on the job. Gallant's aides said it was business-as-usual at the Defense Ministry.

As local media this week crackled with reports of Netanyahu considering whether to replace Gallant with stalwarts of his right-wing Likud party, Gallant remained in limbo — and even so, the public face of his ministry.

He greeted the Azerbaijani foreign minister, toured two military bases and attended Tuesday's security cabinet meeting this week. On Thursday, Gallant attended a celebration ahead of the Jewish Passover holiday with the director of the Shin Bet security service, his office said, releasing a photo of him smiling beside Director Ronen Bar.

“We have a duty to calm the spirits in Israeli society and maintain an inclusive and unifying discourse," Gallant said at the holiday toast.

The questions swirling around the fate of Israel's crucial Defense Ministry — which maintains Israel's 55-year-old military occupation of the West Bank and contends with threats from Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah group and the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers — reflects the tensions tearing at Netanyahu's right-wing coalition after one of the most dramatic weeks for Israel in decades.

It's also a leadership test of Israel's longest-serving premier as he governs a deeply polarized country and faces charges of corruption.

Netanyahu's decision to pause plans to weaken Israel's Supreme Court in the face of the country's biggest protest movement underscores the complex juggling act that the prime minister must perform in holding together his governing coalition, experts say.

On the one hand, Netanyahu must please his far-right and religiously conservative coalition partners — supporters of the judicial overhaul — who vaulted him to power even as he stands trial.

But he also must weigh grave concerns over the plan from Israel's closet ally, the United States, as well as anger from more moderate politicians and, significantly, dissent from within Israel's military over fears the national crisis could threaten the country's security. A growing number of military reservists had declined to report for duty in protest of the measures, raising concerns that the crisis could harm Israel’s military capabilities.

Netanyahu’s office declined to comment further on Gallant's unresolved situation. But the conflicting pressures have resulted in an impasse over Gallant's future and who serves as defense minister.

“Netanyahu has extremists surrounding him and they want to see blood, they want to see Gallant removed," said Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Those politicians include far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezazel Smotrich, who received outsized power in coalition deals that persuaded them to join the government.

But as the first senior Likud official to break ranks over the judicial overhaul, Gallant has proven himself to be “someone who is more concerned about the national interest than the personal interest of Netanyahu," Talshir added.

Officially firing and replacing him could trigger backlash not only from tens of thousands of Israeli protesters taking to the streets weekly and from Israel's already unnerved military officials, but also from the Biden administration, she said.

The US, which gives Israel a more-than-$3 billion annual assistance package and diplomatic backing in international forums, has expressed misgivings about Netanyahu's efforts to change the Israeli judicial system. President Joe Biden's blunt criticism of the overhaul this week — even after Netanyahu's decision to halt it — led to a rare open dispute between the allies.

“The Biden administration saw Gallant as someone dependable, someone they can work with,” said Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based analyst for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The judicial plan would give the embattled Netanyahu and his allies the final say in appointing the nation’s judges. It would also give parliament, which is controlled by his allies, authority to overturn Supreme Court decisions and limit the court’s ability to review laws. Critics say the plan would irreparably weaken Israel’s system of checks and balances and lead the country toward autocracy.

As Netanyahu met this week with potential alternatives to Gallant, such as Economy Minister Nir Barkat, Israeli media reported a flurry of proposals that would allow Gallant to stay on — including that he offer a public apology, or remain as defense minister but resign from parliament and forfeit his ability to vote against the overhaul.

But on Friday it appeared Gallant and Netanyahu had still not reached an agreement.

“At the bottom of all this is the realization by (Netanyahu) and most of the Likud that firing Gallant was a huge mistake," said Yaari. “Netanyahu is trying to stay above water, but he cannot really swim.”



New Mpox Strain Is Changing Fast; African Scientists Are ‘Working Blind’ to Respond 

Dr. Robert Musole, medical director of the Kavumu hospital (R) consults an infant suffering from a severe form of mpox at the Kavumu hospital, 30 km north of Bukavu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, August 24, 2024. (AFP)
Dr. Robert Musole, medical director of the Kavumu hospital (R) consults an infant suffering from a severe form of mpox at the Kavumu hospital, 30 km north of Bukavu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, August 24, 2024. (AFP)
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New Mpox Strain Is Changing Fast; African Scientists Are ‘Working Blind’ to Respond 

Dr. Robert Musole, medical director of the Kavumu hospital (R) consults an infant suffering from a severe form of mpox at the Kavumu hospital, 30 km north of Bukavu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, August 24, 2024. (AFP)
Dr. Robert Musole, medical director of the Kavumu hospital (R) consults an infant suffering from a severe form of mpox at the Kavumu hospital, 30 km north of Bukavu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, August 24, 2024. (AFP)

Scientists studying the new mpox strain that has spread out of Democratic Republic of Congo say the virus is changing faster than expected, and often in areas where experts lack the funding and equipment to properly track it.

That means there are numerous unknowns about the virus itself, its severity and how it is transmitting, complicating the response, half a dozen scientists in Africa, Europe and the United States told Reuters.

Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, has been a public health problem in parts of Africa since 1970, but received little global attention until it surged internationally in 2022, prompting the World Health Organization to declare a global health emergency. That declaration ended 10 months later.

A new strain of the virus, known as clade Ib, has the world's attention again after the WHO declared a new health emergency.

The strain is a mutated version of clade I, a form of mpox spread by contact with infected animals that has been endemic in Congo for decades. Mpox typically causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions and can kill.

Congo has had more than 18,000 suspected clade I and clade Ib mpox cases and 615 deaths this year, according to the WHO. There have also been 222 confirmed clade Ib cases in four African countries in the last month, plus a case each in Sweden and Thailand in people with a travel history in Africa.

"I worry that in Africa, we are working blindly," said Dr. Dimie Ogoina, an infectious diseases expert at Niger Delta University Hospital in Nigeria who chairs the WHO's mpox emergency committee. He first raised the alarm about potential sexual transmission of mpox in 2017, now an accepted route of spread for the virus.

"We don’t understand our outbreak very well, and if we don't understand our outbreak very well, we will have difficulty addressing the problem in terms of transmission dynamics, the severity of the disease, risk factors of the disease," Ogoina said. "And I worry about the fact that the virus seems to be mutating and producing new strains."

He said it took clade IIb in Nigeria five years or more to evolve enough for sustained spread among humans, sparking the 2022 global outbreak. Clade Ib has done the same thing in less than a year.

MUTATING 'MORE RAPIDLY'

Mpox is an orthopoxvirus, from the family that causes smallpox. Population-wide protection from a global smallpox vaccine campaign 50 years ago has waned, as the vaccinating stopped when the disease was eradicated.

Genetic sequencing of clade Ib infections, which the WHO estimates emerged mid-September 2023, show they carry a mutation known as APOBEC3, a signature of adaptation in humans.

The virus that causes mpox has typically been fairly stable and slow to mutate, but APOBEC-driven mutations can accelerate viral evolution, said Dr. Miguel Paredes, who is studying the evolution of mpox and other viruses at Fred Hutchison Cancer Center in Seattle.

"All the human-to-human cases of mpox have this APOBEC signature of mutations, which means that it's mutating a little bit more rapidly than we would expect," he said.

Paredes and other scientists said a response was complicated by several mpox outbreaks happening at once.

In the past, mpox was predominantly acquired through human contact with infected animals. That is still driving a rise in Congo in clade I cases – also known as clade Ia - likely due in part to deforestation and increased consumption of bushmeat, scientists said.

The mutated versions, clade Ib and IIb, can now essentially be considered a sexually transmitted disease, said Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, a South African epidemiologist and chair of the Africa CDC’s mpox advisory committee. Most of the mutated clade Ib cases are among adults, driven at first by an epidemic among female sex workers in South Kivu, Congo.

The virus also can spread through close contact with an infected person, which is likely how clusters of children have been infected with clade Ib, particularly in Burundi and in eastern Congo’s displacement camps, where crowded living conditions may be contributing.

Children, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems or other illnesses may be at greater risk of serious mpox disease and death, say the WHO and mpox scientists.

Clade I has typically caused more severe disease, with fatality rates of 4%-11%, compared to around 1% for clade II. Ogoina said data from Congo suggests few have died of the new Ib version, but he feared some data is being mixed up.

More research is urgently needed, but three teams tracking mpox outbreaks in Africa say they cannot even access chemicals needed for diagnostic tests. Clade Ib can also be missed by some diagnostic tests.

Planning a response, including vaccination strategies, without this is difficult, the scientists said.

Karim said around half of cases in eastern Congo, where Ib is particularly prevalent, are only being diagnosed by doctors, with no laboratory confirmation.

Getting samples to labs is difficult because the healthcare system is already under pressure, he said. And around 750,000 people have been displaced amid fighting between the M23 rebel group and the government.

Many African laboratories cannot get the supplies they need, said Dr. Emmanuel Nakoune, an mpox expert at the Institut Pasteur in Bangui, Central African Republic, which also has clade Ia cases.

"This is not a luxury," he said, but necessary to track deadly outbreaks.