Israel’s ousted defense minister says the military has done all it can in Gaza

On his last day as Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant told family members of the Israeli hostages in Gaza that the Israeli military had achieved all of its objectives in Gaza and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was responsible for holding up a ceasefire deal that would end the war and get the remaining hostages home.

Netanyahu fired Gallant last week, saying that trust between them had “eroded” and that “significant differences” had emerged between himself and Gallant about how to proceed in the war in Gaza.

Gil Dickmann was one of the family members at the meeting with Gallant on Thursday. “I felt like he was finally free to speak freely and to say what he thinks,” Dickmann told NPR.

Gallant, who served as defense minister for the entirety of the war until now, told them that there was a deal on the table in July that would have brought the hostages home in two phases — Gallant said he urged Netanyahu to accept the deal but that the prime minister refused.

It was heartbreaking for Dickmann to hear. His cousin, Carmel Gat, was 39 when she was taken hostage — along with about 250 others — last Oct. 7, in the Hamas-led attack on Israel that killed around 1,200 people.

After Netanyahu said no to the possible ceasefire deal in July, Gat was killed in Gaza along with five other Israeli hostages in August. Hamas later took responsibility for their killings.

Since July, thousands more Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza — bringing the death toll up to more than 43,000 according to the ministry of health — and several more hostages have been confirmed dead as well.

“It was very clear from him that the reason why we didn’t take this deal was not military, it wasn’t diplomatic — I think it was a political reason,” Dickmann said, referring to Netanyahu using it for his own political gain “That meant that my cousin, who was alive at the beginning of July, stayed in captivity and was murdered just six weeks later.”

Dickmann says Gallant told them that the Israeli military has now accomplished all it can in Gaza.

“What he said is there’s only so much you can do with force, and they’ve done it,” he recalled.

Dickmann paraphrased Gallant’s words to them: “‘We don’t have any more rivals, any more enemies that we can even kill right now, because they’re all dead. We killed all of them.’ As the Minister of Defense, he said, ‘I did my job’.” Gallant was referring to a series of high level Hamas leaders who have been killed by the Israeli military, including leader Yahya Sinwar in October.

NPR obtained a transcript and listened to a recording of the meeting with Gallant and was able to verify what Gil Dickmann told us.

NPR also reached out to both Gallant and the Prime Minister’s office about these claims. Neither responded.

For Dickmann, hearing that Netanyahu has been the main sticking point in negotiations was kind of a relief. “It feels like we’ve been through 13 months of gaslighting in which Netanyahu is telling us ‘No, this is not my fault, […] don’t blame me for the fact that the hostages aren’t here’,” Dickmann said.

Gallant’s ouster is the latest in a series of personnel moves Netanyahu has made over the war in Gaza. In June, Netanyahu dissolved his war cabinet, which gave him more unilateral control over the war.

The International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants for both Netanyahu and Gallant for war crimes related to Gaza.

Gallant’s firing, according to an Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, was announced on the day of the U.S. presidential election because the Biden administration would be otherwise distracted and wouldn’t be able to protest the decision.

But it didn’t stop the Israeli public from protesting across the country, shutting down major highways, lighting fires and eventually being quelled by police. Many saw this as one more move toward the breakdown of Israel’s democracy.

“We feel that our country is slipping away, and tonight is just the last nail on the coffin,” said 37-year-old Maayan Oz, at protests in Tel Aviv. “It’s the last proof that the Prime Minister decided that his own interests are more important than the security and the life of the citizen.”

Efforts to get ceasefire talks restarted have been slow moving. Meanwhile, dozens of Palestinians continue to be killed by Israeli strikes every day in Gaza, and 101 Israeli hostages — around a third of whom are confirmed dead — continue to languish in captivity.

NPR’s Daniel Estrin contributed to this report.