With Israel in the grip of a deepening political and security crisis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week reinstated Defence Minister Yoav Galant, two weeks after he had supposedly fired him for breaking cabinet ranks over the government’s proposed judicial overhaul.
It marked a major climbdown by Netanyahu, who first sacked Galant for calling for a freeze on the planned reforms, then allowed him to stay in office temporarily in the face of rocket fire from Gaza, Syria and Lebanon, and Palestinian terror attacks on civilians and foreign tourists.
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Big guns: An IDF exercise in the Golan Heights (Getty Images)
Last Monday he restored him to his job permanently, while blaming the opposition and the previous government for the current security crisis and for the huge anti-reform demonstrations that led to the prime minister postponing the legislation for the time being.
The news of Galant’s dismissal led to a brief general strike.
“We had differences, even serious differences,” said Netanyahu. “But I have decided to put the arguments behind us.”
Galant tweeted a photograph of himself with the prime minister with the words: “Continuing together with full strength for Israel’s security.”
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Yoav Galant and Netanyahu (Flash 90)
Netanyahu announced his volte-face in a televised address to the nation, in which he said, “our country is under a terrorist assault”.
He added: “Under the previous government the number of terror attacks doubled. Our enemies… believe they can take us on, with combined terror from Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.
"We will repel these threats and we will defeat our enemies. We’ve done so in the past and we’ll do so again.”
In the deadliest attack of the latest wave of violence, British-Israeli nationals Lucy Dee, 45, and her daughters Maia, 20, and Rina, 15, were murdered by Palestinian terrorists in their car in the West Bank, 70 miles north of their home town of Efrat.
They were the wife and daughters of Rabbi Leo Dee, formerly rabbi of Radlett United Synagogue. The attackers escaped and their car was found abandoned in Nablus.
An Italian tourist was killed and seven others, including several British citizens, were injured in a car-ramming attack along a Tel Aviv street near Charles Clore Park next to the popular beachfront boardwalk, which is normally filled with tourists and local residents.
The dead man was named as Alessandro Parini, 35, a lawyer from Rome. The driver, Yousef Abu Jaber, 45, an Israeli citizen and father-of-five from Kfar Qasim with no security record, was shot dead at the scene by police, who quickly arrived on the scene.
Kfar Qasim mayor Adel Badir said: “We denounce any attack against innocent people and call for all sides to show tolerance.
“This is not the way of Kfar Qasim residents. The city was and remains a place for coexistence and the pursuit of peace.”
Two salvos of three rockets each were fired at Israel from Syria, triggering alarms in the Israeli towns of Natur and Avnei Eitan in the Golan Heights. Three rockets entered Israel: one was intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-rocket defence system, while the others landed in open fields.
A Palestinian-Syrian militia, the Al Quds Brigade, claimed responsibility for the first salvo.
In response, the Israeli Air Force and IDF artillery hit sites in Syria from where the rockets originated.
The IDF’s reaction to rocket attacks from Lebanon was notably more muted, possibly through concern over escalation from Hezbollah. However, the rockets are thought to have been fired by Palestinian groups operating out of southern Lebanon rather than by Hezbollah.
But Israeli intelligence believes that cooperation between Hezbollah and Palestinian terror groups, with the backing of Iran, has been growing.
It is thought that Hamas in Gaza, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, does not want to see escalation of cross-border attacks but prefers to promote terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank.
