Moshe Yaalon Picked as Israel Defense Minister
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday chose Moshe Yaalon, an ex-general and vice premier from his right-wing Likud party, to be Israel’s next defence minister, a government official said.
Yaalon, 62, spent the past four years in Netanyahu’s inner circle of ministers, routinely boosting the rightist prime minister and his strategic outlook.
He shares the prime minister’s distrust of the Palestinians, but in the past, officials say, he has taken a more cautious line about the timing for a possible Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites.
The government official said Yaalon was appointed to the post by Netanyahu, who was assigning cabinet positions two days after agreements were signed to form a new coalition government, which is expected to take office on Monday.
Yaalon will replace Ehud Barak, who headed a centre-left party in the outgoing coalition and ran the Defence Ministry for the past seven years. Barak was not a candidate in a Jan. 22 national election.
Yaalon served as armed forces chief from 2002 until 2005, when his term was not extended after he opposed Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip that year.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO