Five men will play a key role in determining the course of Israel’s war with Hamas: they are the war cabinet set up by prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to oversee what is likely to be the biggest military operation the country has embarked on in years.

Put together after Hamas launched the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7th, killing 1,400 people, the war cabinet – set up in a deal that brought Netanyahu’s erstwhile rival Benny Gantz into a unity government – now faces the pivotal decision of how to manage the ground invasion of Gaza that Netanyahu has promised as part of a drive to destroy Hamas and end its rule in the enclave.

The narrow war cabinet consists of three men: Netanyahu, Gantz and defence minister Yoav Gallant. They are joined by two “observers”: Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s closest political ally and minister of strategic affairs, and Gadi Eisenkot, an ally of Gantz and former chief of staff of Israel’s military.

The Members

Binyamin Netanyahu

Israeli prime minister and Likud party leader Binyamin Netanyahu famously pledged to topple Hamas’s rule over Gaza in 2009. But despite leading the country for most of the intervening 14 years and positioning himself as Israel’s “Mr Security”, the former commando in the elite Sayeret Matkal reconnaissance unit never tried to do so.

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People who have worked with the 74-year-old politician say the contrast between his bombastic rhetoric and far more cautious actions is typical of his approach. Although Netanyahu authorised a limited ground operation in Gaza in 2014, he has never ordered anything on the scale or complexity of the ground operation for which Israel’s military is at present preparing.

“Netanyahu zigzags, that’s his reputation,” said one former official. “He talks big. But the action [that follows] is far from big.”

Hamas’s devastating assault on Israel has made the sort of ground operation Netanyahu has shied away from in the past seemingly inevitable. But nearly three weeks on, he has yet to give the green light – to the frustration of hardliners in his rightwing government.

Yoav Gallant

A former head of Israel’s Southern Command and a key player in the war against Hamas in 2008-09, minister of defence Yoav Gallant is regarded as one of the more hawkish members of the war cabinet.

In the aftermath of Hamas’s assault, he pledged that Israel’s response would “change reality on the ground in Gaza for the next 50 years”. “Fifteen years ago, as head of the Southern Command, I came close to ‘breaking the neck’ of Hamas. I was stopped by the political echelon,” he said. “This phenomenon will not continue.”

Gallant’s gung-ho style is at odds with Netanyahu’s more cautious approach. The two were forced to issue a statement this week denying that they disagreed over how to run the war, after media reports that the delay in launching a ground offensive was causing friction between them.

This would not be their first clash. In March, Netanyahu sacked Gallant after he warned that a controversial judicial overhaul pushed by the government risked damaging the military. Netanyahu grudgingly reversed the sacking after mass protests in the wake of the announcement.

Benny Gantz

A former paratrooper who held a host of senior positions in Israel’s military and served as chief of staff during the 2014 war with Hamas, Benny Gantz was one of Netanyahu’s main opponents until Hamas’s assault altered Israeli politics.

In the aftermath of the attack, Gantz – who leads one of Israel’s main opposition groupings, National Unity – agreed to form a unity government and join the war cabinet.

But he and his ally Gadi Eisenkot insisted on establishing a clear plan for how Israeli forces would leave Gaza after the war and what governance structure would replace Hamas, something Israeli planners are still trying to work out.

It is the second time Gantz has thrown in his lot with Netanyahu. In 2020, after 18 months of political gridlock, the pair formed a unity government to fight the Covid-19 pandemic. But it collapsed in acrimony after just seven months, with Netanyahu forcing its dissolution before Gantz could succeed him as prime minister as had originally been envisaged.

Observers

Ron Dermer

No one in Israeli politics is closer to Netanyahu than his long-time ally Ron Dermer. As finance minister in the early 2000s, Netanyahu appointed the smooth-talking Dermer, who hails from a politically active family from Florida, as economic attache at the Israeli embassy in Washington. In 2013, he named Dermer his ambassador to the US.

When Netanyahu returned to power in January, he made Dermer – once dubbed Netanyahu’s “brain” – minister of strategic affairs, entrusting him with a number of sensitive foreign policy portfolios.

One of the most important was his role in the drive to normalise relations with Saudi Arabia, which before Hamas’s assault on Israel was one of the government’s key areas of focus. Dermer has also played an important role in managing relations with the US, Israel’s most important security partner.

Gadi Eisenkot

Gadi Eisenkot succeeded Gantz as the chief of staff of Israel’s military and then followed him into politics, being elected to parliament last year as a member of the National Unity alliance.

During his time in the military, he was the originator of Israel’s “campaign between wars” against Iran-allied militias in Syria. He also headed Israel’s Northern Command, which gave him lengthy experience battling Hizbullah, the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon that has engaged in an escalating series of skirmishes with Israeli forces in recent weeks.

“He’s not a man of big words and announcements. But he’s a very, very focused commander,” said Michael Milstein, a former Israel Defence Forces intelligence official who served under Eisenkot.

“People like Gantz and Eisenkot are tough, but they’re balanced and realistic,” he added. “When the government says its goal is to eradicate Hamas, they are people who really know how complicated this target is ... and what you can achieve and what you cannot.”

– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023