Benny Gantz, the soldier who dreams of replacing Netanyahu – L’Express

A discreet trip. At the beginning of October 2023, Benny Gantz is no longer just a simple opposition deputy in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, after having been chief of staff of the army (2011-2015), then minister of Defense (2020-2022). Rather reserved, the sixty-year-old does not hold back from criticizing the radicalism of the government of Benyamin Netanyahu and his supremacist ministers. On October 4, Gantz was in Washington to speak with Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, who is very close to the American president.

“Benny Gantz never reveals all his cards, underlines Aaron David Miller, former advisor to the American administration on the Middle East. He builds the largest possible network, he has links with religious people, with settlers, with the United States, with the Palestinian Authority and obviously within the Israeli army.” According to several sources, Gantz was in Washington to discuss with the Biden administration the ongoing normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis, cooled by the far-right ministers of the Netanyahu government, sought support within the Israeli opposition to conclude the rapprochement. Even without a ministry, Gantz remains at the center of the Middle East game.

In Netanyahu’s War Cabinet, out of “selfless” patriotism

Three days later, on October 7, hundreds of Hamas terrorists entered Israel and massacred more than 1,200 civilians. The Jewish state declared war and Gantz chose to join the War Cabinet, a tight emergency government, a symbol of the unity of the nation. “There is a time for peace and a time for war,” he explains. As a former defense minister, he recognizes his own responsibility for the security failure, unlike Netanyahu who prefers to blame the army and intelligence.

Already popular, the Gantz coast is taking off in Israeli opinion. “If he is so loved in Israel, it is because twice he showed that he was above all a disinterested patriot,” points out Aaron David Miller, now a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: by forming a government with Netanyahu to manage the Covid-19 crisis in 2020, and when he volunteered to join the War Cabinet after October 7. While he hates Netanyahu, Gantz agrees to sit in the same room with him to make decisions in the interest of the nation.” If elections were held today, Gantz’s party would triple its number of Knesset seats, from 12 to 37, while those of Netanyahu’s Likud party would halve, from 32 to 16. One way royal to become Prime Minister.

Especially since the days of the fragile national union seem numbered. After three months of war, politics is regaining its rights in Israel and Gantz is losing patience with Netanyahu’s maneuvers. With Gadi Eisenkot, also a former chief of staff who joined the War Cabinet, Gantz demands a clear plan for ending the conflict and for the management of Gaza in the future. The two men also demand that priority be given to the release of the 160 remaining hostages in the Gaza Strip. Opposite, the Netanyahu government is blocking any progress and appears to be engaging the IDF in an endless war. “We cannot bring the hostages back alive without making a deal [avec le Hamas]”, Eisenkot told the media last week, emphasizing that anyone who preaches the opposite – like Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Galant – is “trying to sell illusions to the population.” Divorce is coming.

“He looks much more like Churchill than Netanyahu”

“The only question is really when Gantz will leave the War Cabinet,” said Gideon Rahat, professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Netanyahu knows this and his entourage has started a campaign to denigrate Gantz. . The day he leaves the Cabinet, it will be even nastier…” Since the former Chief of Staff entered politics five years ago, all the polls predict that he will one day replace the current Prime Minister. “His main asset consists precisely in not being Netanyahu,” continues Gideon Rahat. “He does not pit people against each other, he does not lie to them, he does not manipulate them… Gantz shows real qualities of a popular leader, without fantasizing a reality that doesn’t exist. He looks much more like Churchill than Netanyahu.”

For a long time, Israel brought former generals to power, such as Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon, both of whom served as chiefs of staff before becoming prime minister. Benny Gantz began his military career as a paratrooper, before climbing the ranks of the IDF one by one. The son of survivors of the Nazi death camps, he always maintained a reputation as an impeccably cool officer in the army, even during the most tense episodes of his career. Gantz, for example, led the commando responsible for securing Operation Solomon in Ethiopia, aimed at evacuating 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 1991. In 2000, when Israeli troops withdrew after fourteen years of presence in Lebanon, Gantz was the last soldier to cross the border again, closing the door behind him.

After the trauma caused by the Hamas attack, the former chief of staff can offer a reassuring face to the Israelis. “Even if the military high command has been criticized since October 7, the army remains the most respected body of state in Israel, maintains David Khalfa, co-director of the North Africa and Middle East Observatory to the Jean Jaurès foundation. This will be an important advantage for Gantz, who embodies the ‘security’ line: through his career, he has a conception of national security dominated by a rather cautious strategic and military perspective. He is not go to war and thus place yourself in the right line of the founding fathers of Israel.”

With the Palestinians, precious links

If Gantz has never made his position on the creation of a Palestinian state known, he has already shown his frank opposition to a partial annexation of the West Bank, which he described as “a catastrophe which would have dramatic consequences”. “We would become pariahs in Washington; the West Bank would descend into violence; Arab countries would sever ties […] “Not only would annexation trigger a violent response, it would also sabotage any hope of future negotiations to resolve the conflict,” the former paratrooper wrote in the newspaper Haaretz in March 2021. “On the Palestinian question, Gantz remains very cautious but has never shown hostility in principle to the two-state solution, notes David Khalfa. He knows that the Israeli state of mind is not not at this stage of reflection, because the country is in the middle of a war. Resuming dialogue with the Palestinians will take time, the priority for the Israelis being the restoration of security.”

His military experience led him to be stationed for several years in the West Bank and to work closely with the Palestinian Authority. Gantz has maintained ties with his senior officials and can boast of being one of the few current Israeli politicians to have met several times with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “If he formed a government, it would be center-right, anticipates the American Aaron David Miller. His priorities would be to guarantee the independence of justice, to unify the country and to launch a pragmatic dialogue, but extremely harsh with the Palestinians.” Even with Gantz, the path to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict still promises to be long, tortuous and painful.