Israel’s defense minister announced his resignation on Friday, saying the governing party had been taken over by “extremist and unsafe elements” and that he no longer trusted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following reports that he was to be replaced.
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“I told the prime minister this morning that due to his conduct in recent developments, and in light of my lack of trust in him, I am resigning”, he said.
Still more weightily, Golan was defended by the defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon, who called on the officers to “speak their minds… even if your comments are not part of the mainstream and even if they stand in contrast with the ideas adopted by the senior command or the government”.
That condition looked likely to be met as Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party pressed talks with Yisrael Beitenu on Friday on the terms of a deal to boost the coalition’s wafer-thin majority in parliament.
“I believe that if Bogie Ya’alon was not asked to leave the defence ministry and enter the foreign ministry, what he calls “a crisis of faith between us” would not have developed, and he wouldn’t have resigned”, the prime minister said using the defence minister’s nickname.
Netanyahu on Wednesday announced he had offered former foreign minister Lieberman the coveted role of minister of defense after the two had sat down for a hastily-scheduled meeting.
Yehuda Glick, a Temple Mount activist and Likud party member, is set to take Ya’alon’s place in the Knesset.
“The State of Israel is patient and tolerant toward the weak among it and minorities …”
Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to Yaalon’s resignation announcement.
Netanyahu was expected to soon conclude negotiations with the Yisrael Beitenu party led by Avigdor Lieberman, a far-right politician detested by the Palestinians.
As defence minister, Mr Lieberman, who himself lives in the occupied West Bank, will oversee military operations in the Palestinian territories and have a major say in policy towards the settlements.
“I fought with all my might against attempts to harm the Supreme Court and Israel’s justices, trends whose outcomes greatly harm the rule of law and could be disastrous for our country”.
Once a champion of the hard right for his opposition to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal – he was IDF chief of staff at the time – Yaalon came under attack more recently from the right over his handling of a case involving a soldier charged with manslaughter for shooting an incapacitated Palestinian assailant in Hebron.
Diskin also revealed in his Op-Ed that Ya’alon disobeyed direct orders while serving as the head of the IDF Israeli Central Command in 1998, when Netanyahu was prime minister.
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While the Israeli media is calling the new coalition the “most right-wing in Israel’s history”, Netanyahu insisted he would still pursue peace talks with the Palestinians, although the peace process has been suspended since 2014. Under the status quo agreement between Israel and Jordan, only Muslims are allowed to pray at the holy site.
