Now look at the New York Times headline: “Moshe Yaalon, Israeli Defense Minister, Resigns”.
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In a live broadcasted statement at noon, he said that the ruling Likud party was taken over by “extremist and risky elements” after Netanyahu reportedly made a decision to replace him with the hawkish Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the Yisrael Beytenu (“Israel Our Home”) party.
Yaalon said earlier he told Netanyahu that “following his conduct in recent developments and in light of the lack of trust in him, I am resigning from the government”.
Reports over the past few days indicate that Netanyahu intends to appoint former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman to the post of defense minister.
And so, operating with virtually no restraints, Netanyahu continues to maneuver and to aggressively advance his hard-line agenda.
The expert said that having Lieberman, who is now the second most important politician of Israel, in the defense minister’s office and Tel-Aviv will ensure the successful cooperation between the defense establishments of Israel and Azerbaijan, including the military – industrial projects.
Yaalon said he always put Israel’s security and other interests above his own, but “unfortunately I found myself lately in tough disputes over moral and professional issues with the prime minister and several ministers and members of parliament”.
Therefore, Defense Minister Yaalon’s resignation means that the next person on the Likud party list will take his seat in the Knesset.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected claims by the outgoing defense minister that Likud was being taken over by extremist elements. In a statement he made later, Ya’alon stressed he was not exiting politics entirely and that he plans to vie for leadership roles in the future.
A former chief of Israel’s armed forces, Yaalon had shored up relations with the Pentagon that provided a counter-weight to Netanyahu’s policy feuds with U.S. President Barack Obama over peace talks with the Palestinians and Iran’s nuclear program.
Moshe Yaalon said he no longer had any trust in Netanyahu after the hawkish premier offered his post to a hardliner loathed by the Palestinians, in a bid to expand the governing coalition’s majority. Yaalon praised IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Golan who spoke at a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony of his despair regarding increasing extremism within Israel; Netanyahu criticized Golan for drawing comparisons between Israel and pre-World War II Germany.
Yaalon resigned Friday, leaving not just his post as minister but his position in the Knesset and warning that “extremist and unsafe forces have taken over Israel and the Likud movement and are destabilizing our home and threatening to harm its inhabitants”.
The reports about Netanyahu’s offer quote political sources but have not been confirmed. “Therefore I took great efforts to have the Zionist Union join the government. It was a result of the need to broaden the government in order to bring stability to the state of Israel in the face of the great challenges ahead of us”, he added.
Jews believe the site was home to the first and second Jewish temples before being destroyed by the Babylonians and Romans, and thus revere it as the holiest site in Judaism.
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Glick survived a 2014 assassination attempt by a Palestinian, and recently renewed his visits to the mosque compound.
