Palestine

With Gallant out of the picture, and Netanyahu now surrounded by his people, the imperative for major international pressure is even more intense. Gallant, who has no problem slaughtering innocent Palestinians by the tens of thousands, still saw matters through a security lens, albeit a vicious and brutal one.

Netanyahu has other concerns. He wants to prolong the fighting to continue to delay his corruption trial, but he is also moving forward with his so-called “judicial coup,” an effort Gallant also opposed. That is more reason to avoid any diminishment of violence. His right-wing coalition partners want to see Israel move toward a regional military victory, eventually defeating Iran and establishing Israel as the undisputed regional hegemon, in their vision.

We have already seen Israel taking steps to advance the genocide in Gaza, to exponentially increase the violence in the West Bank, to devastate Lebanon, and to try to establish dominance over Iran. Gallant was raising questions of long term strategy, which held some hope for at least minor restraint. There will be no such voice now.

That may not necessarily mean escalation, but it does make de-escalation less likely. Netanyahu sees time as being on his side and is more threatened by the end of the fighting—even if it were to end in what most Israelis would call victory in Gaza and Lebanon—than by its continuation. Men like Katz and Zamir are not going to talk him down from that, so as long as Sa’ar is bought off, Netanyahu will have successfully removed a “renegade” in Gallant and will face even less restraint than he did before, hard as that it is to imagine.