A united front, despite everything. Since October 11, the five members of the war cabinet who lead military operations in Gaza, on the Lebanese border and in the West Bank, have maintained a fiction of unity at the head of state. This cabinet reflects the image of the Israeli nation, united in mourning and in the largest military mobilization in its history (more than 350,000 reservists), but disoriented and deeply divided.
Three generals surround Benjamin Netanyahu, all dressed in black for a month, who constantly clarify and contradict the Prime Minister’s declarations: the Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, and the former chiefs of staff Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot. These two elected officials from the opposition (National Unity, center right) joined the government on the fifth day of the war, like reservists donning the uniform. They want to be a safeguard around the Prime Minister.
Mr. Netanyahu joined in this cabinet the American Ron Dermer, his “second brain”, one of the few men he considers as an alter ego and who has been with him since 2000. Religious, born in Florida, Mr. Dermer did not serve in the Israeli army. He is responsible for relations with the administration of Joe Biden, who is involved like none of his predecessors in the Israeli decision-making apparatus in times of war.
Decision by consensus
Mr. Dermer knows these American officials intimately: he has had bitter enmities with them for a decade. When Mr. Netanyahu appointed him ambassador to Washington in 2013, advisers to former Democratic President Barack Obama considered refusing his credentials, believing that he was less a diplomat than an American political operator, very involved in the Republican Party. Close to former President Donald Trump, Mr. Dermer helped convince him to denounce the 2015 international agreement on Iranian nuclear power, three years later. In 2021, this advisor publicly declared that Israel must abandon the support of Jewish voters in the Democratic Party, whom he considered too critical, to rely on the unwavering support of evangelical Christians.
The leader of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox Shass party, Arié Déri, twice convicted of corruption and tax evasion, is the sole representative in the war cabinet of the coalition of religious fundamentalist parties, which brought Mr. Netanyahu to power in December 2022. This old ally, political astute, occupies an observer seat in the cabinet. Mr. Déri leads a party whose majority of voters refuse military service and which seeks to preserve massive state subsidies granted in the spring.
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