Closing summary
We’re winding up our live reporting of the Middle East crisis for now – it’s just passed 3.45am in Tel Aviv, Beirut and Gaza City. Our latest full report can be seen here, as well as all our Middle East coverage. Here’s a recap of the latest – thanks for reading.
Widespread protests have broken out across Israel after the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, fired his defence minister, Yoav Gallant. Netanyahu said there had been too many gaps between them over the management of Israel’s wars and that a “crisis of trust” had developed. He named Israel Katz as the new defence minister. Thousands of Israelis spontaneously rallied in Tel Aviv against the decision, blocking a main road across Israel, while others demonstrated outside Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem, chanting slogans like “We deserve better leaders” and calling the prime minister a traitor. Some clashed with police.
Gallant said after his dismissal that he believed “everyone of conscription age must serve in the IDF and defend the state of Israel” – including the Ultra-Orthodox – and that it was Israel’s “moral obligation and responsibility” to bring Israeli hostages home “with as many alive as possible”. There would not be any atonement for abandoning the captives and for “those leading this mistaken path”, he said. Gallant also spoke of the need for a state inquiry into any security failures that enabled the 7 October attacks.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, called Gallant’s dismissal “the last thing Israel needs”. Opposition leader Yair Lapid said the move was an “act of madness” in the middle of a war and that “Netanyahu is selling Israel’s security and the Israeli army soldiers for a disgraceful political survival”. The far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, praised Netanyahu for firing the defence minister, saying that “with Gallant … absolute victory cannot be achieved”.
Israel Katz vowed to prioritise the return of Israel’s hostages and the “destruction” of Hamas and Hezbollah, in his first post on X since accepting the defence minister role.
An Israeli strike targeting a residential building in the town of Barja, about 20km south of Beirut, killed at least 20 people on Tuesday, Lebanon’s health ministry said. Rescue operations were under way, it said. Flames reportedly continued to emerge from the building on Tuesday evening.
An Iran-backed militia in Iraq reportedly claimed to have fired drones at Israel. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it fired them at an unspecified site in what it appeared to indicate was in Israel’s south, and attacked a “vital target” in the port city of Haifa.
Updated
Yoav Gallant’s sacking as defence minister is likely to precede a shake-up of Israeli-US relations and will give Benjamin Netanyahu a freer hand, Andrew Roth reports in this analysis, in case you missed it earlier.
He writes:
Netanyahu’s decision to fire Gallant removes one of the harshest critics from his own government and empowers members of the far-right and ultra-Orthodox interests in Israel to key positions in Netanyahu’s cabinet.
By all accounts, the key causes for Gallant’s departure lie in domestic Israeli politics: the two men’s disagreements over a hostage deal with Hamas, Gallant’s opposition to blanket exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jews from service in the IDF, and over a leaking scandal involving a close aide to Netanyahu.
But Gallant’s departure also comes at a crucial moment: the day of a US presidential election that will determine the nature of continued US support for Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as leniency toward Israeli policy in the West Bank and a potential escalation with Iran.
In many ways, Gallant’s sacking is the first step to clear the decks for an unclear new relationship with the US – either with a Kamala Harris administration that will probably continue support for Israel in an environment of deep distrust and growing criticism over the deaths of Palestinians, or a highly unpredictable Donald Trump administration that has vowed to back Israel to “finish the job” despite a fraught personal relationship between the two men.
Read the full analysis here:
Updated
