Israeli war effort will focus on Hezbollah as Netanyahu hints at leadership shakeup

Stopping Hezbollah’s attacks and allowing residents in the north to finally return home is now the official goal of Israel’s war effort, officials said Tuesday — as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly is considering ousting his defense minister.

Thousands of people on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border have been displaced over the past 11 months, as Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces exchange near-daily strikes.

Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel started on Oct. 8, 2023, as a sign of support for the terror group Hamas, which attacked southern Israel the day before.

Israel has consistently launched airstrikes into Lebanon in response to Hezbollah’s aggression and has killed senior members of the terror group.

Israeli officials have also repeatedly threatened to take greater military action against the group — though Tuesday’s statement from the security cabinet appeared mostly symbolic and not indicative of any immediate policy shifts.

Over the past several months, the United States has warned Israel to exercise restraint against Hezbollah, on the grounds that a wider war would not achieve any of its goals.

US envoy Amos Hochstein, who has made several visits to both Lebanon and Israel to try to ease tensions, met with Netanyahu on Monday to reiterate that intensifying the effort against Hezbollah would not help return the Israelis evacuated from the north to their homes, an anonymous US official said.

An all-out war in Lebanon would risk a protracted regional conflict, he explained. 

The Biden administration, he added, was committed to finding a diplomatic solution to Hezbollah’s threats in conjunction with the Gaza cease-fire or on its own.

Residents from the north cannot go home without “a fundamental change in the security situation,” Netayahu countered, according to a statement from his office.

While Israel “appreciates and respects” the US’ support, Israel will “do what is necessary to safeguard its security,” the prime minister insisted.

News about Israel’s shift in focus toward the north broke as Israeli media reported that Nentanyahu was considering firing Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.

Gallant, 65, is a member of Netanyahu’s hard-line Likud party, but the pair have supposedly been at odds at several points during the war against Hamas, the New York Times said.

Netanyahu is rumored to be replacing Gallant with Gideon Sa’ar of the right-wing New Hope faction — though his office insisted that those reports were “incorrect.”

National Unity chairman Benny Gantz, however, accused Netanyahu of “security recklessness” over the move, the Times of Israel reported. 

“What Netanyahu is doing at the moment endangers Israel’s security in the most tangible way that I can remember having been done by a prime minister during a war — and in general,” Gantz said.

“This is the painful dictionary definition of petty politics, at the expense of national security. When we joined the emergency government, we put politics aside for the sake of the war, and now Netanyahu and Sa’ar are putting the war aside, for the sake of politics.”

Members of the Israel Business Forum also warned that firing Gallant could make Israel appear weak to its enemies and hinder the country’s war-battered economy, according to the Times of Israel.

“It is clear that replacing the defense minister in exchange for a political deal regarding legislation that allows exclusion [of most ultra-Orthodox men] from military service will exacerbate the gap in equally sharing the burden,” the forum said.

It “will dramatically increase the frustration among the public who bear the burden of the [military] service, and the economic burden,” they added.

With Post wires