'It's time for some soul-searching': Moshe Ya'alon calls on Gantz, Eisenkot to quit cabinet

Former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon harshly criticized Ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot on Sunday for remaining in the war cabinet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Half a year into a crisis with no end, when the only accomplishment of this government of messianists, draft-dodgers, and crooks, is its own survival (thanks to you) - it’s time for soul-searching,” he wrote. 

The government, he said, is dragging its feet, to the detriment of what soldiers have already accomplished, and to efforts to free the hostages and to return the more than 100,000 internally displaced Israelis to their homes along the borders with Gaza and Lebanon. 

Appealing to “relations with the United States, the economy, internal unity, and the future of the state,” Ya’alon called on the ministers to “come out in public and call for, and work for, elections now.”

Gantz, Eisenkot have both called for elections

Gantz and Eisenkot, of the National Unity party, joined the war cabinet a few days after the outbreak of war with Hamas’s attack on October 7. There, they sit alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Both Gantz and Eisenkot have called for new elections, though they remain in the cabinet; Gantz called last week for elections to be held in September; Eisenkot, in January, called for elections “within a period of months.”

They join members of the opposition, including former prime minister Yair Lapid, who leads the Yesh Atid party, and Merav Michaeli, of Labor. 

Leon Kraiem contributed to this report.