Netanyahu’s ‘war cabinet’ had little power – but its demise does him real damage

Benjamin Netanyahu (second from right) and his war cabinet meet US secretary of state Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv on 3 November 2023. Photograph: Amos Ben Gershom/Israel Gpo/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock

There is very little drama in Netanyahu’s decision, or rather bland and laconic statement that he is dissolving the “war cabinet” that he himself formed on 11 October 2023. Constitutionally and in terms of affecting policy, the decision is a Seinfeld decision: it’s about nothing. The constitutionally authoritative body – the one with real power – is the security cabinet. The war cabinet was a convenient and circumstantial political invention. But Benny Gantz’s recent withdrawal from the government made the forum redundant in terms of policymaking, and politically explosive, since the extreme rightwing ministers now demanded to join.

The dissolution of the war cabinet looks like an important development. It isn’t. Had Winston Churchill dissolved his war cabinet in January 1941, eight months after he assembled it in May 1940, that would have been significant. This is not the same. Churchill’s war cabinet, as Neville Chamberlain’s before him in 1939, or even David Lloyd George’s war cabinet during the first world war in 1917, then called the war policy committee, had clearly defined constitutional and statutory powers and authority. The war cabinet that Netanyahu formed in the panic, disarray and disorientation that ensued in the days after 7 October patently lacked those constitutional powers.

Ostensibly, Netanyahu formed the war cabinet for the same reason that Chamberlain, and particularly Churchill, did: to streamline the decision-making process, to make policy debates more effective, briefings more constructive and to avoid the useless and time-consuming cacophony of pontifications by tens of ministers speaking for what they believe is the historical record, and catering to an enthusiastic audience of themselves only.

In Israel’s case there was also an overriding political reason. The inexperienced, inept, incendiary extremist rightwing government that Netanyahu ceremoniously formed in December 2022 was ill-equipped to deal with wartime strategic thinking, planning and decision processes. Netanyahu needed to shield himself from criticism, surround himself with experience and – since “responsibility” and “accountability” are alien terms to him – shift the onus on to others.

He needed a forum he could conveniently castigate and blame when things went wrong, and criticise members for preventing him from making what he would later call triumphant decisions. Faulting intelligence, blaming the military and the General Security Service (Shabak), and then implicitly – the explicit will come later – attacking US President Biden for depriving him of a historic victory wasn’t enough. He needed the informal forum he could later attack for impeding him.

The need for a centre of responsibility for immediate security and war concerns has long been recognised. In April 1974, the Agranat commission report, established as an inquiry into the strategic surprise leading to the Yom Kippur war in 1973, published its findings, conclusions and recommendations. Among them was the specific need to form a security cabinet that would constitute a war cabinet in the event of a war. An informal forum, PM Golda Meir’s “Kitchenette” group already existed and was not unlike Netanyahu’s 2023 war cabinet.

This recommendation was repeated and reinforced in the Winograd commission reports into the 2006 war in Lebanon. A cabinet was formed and, in 2017, another committee defined its exact powers and work mode. These references all related to the security and foreign affairs cabinet, not the unofficial war cabinet that Netanyahu formed. That was a consultative body, where deliberations and debates were to be held, ideas exchanged and formal cabinet decisions’ implementation overseen and supervised. In fact, when you look at the management and prosecution of the war, and the quality of the decisions made – particularly the indecision – there’s a case to be made that neither the formation nor the dissolution of the war cabinet is of any direct policy significance.

But this doesn’t mean it has no political implications. It does, in abundance. First, what the war cabinet failed to do. The presence of two former chiefs of staff of the IDF-turned politicians, former generals Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, was supposed to add balance, seriousness and purpose. Instead, they failed to secure from Netanyahu a coherent vision for postwar Gaza, a definition of the war’s attainable political goals and plans for different tactical and operational management of the war. For example, once the IDF identified southern Gaza as Hamas’s centre of gravity, the war cabinet failed to effectively question the decision to invade the north instead.

It also abjectly failed to enforce a different force and munitions employment to avoid the indiscriminate deaths of civilians in Gaza. Most glaringly, the war cabinet abjectly failed to respond to President Biden’s framework for postwar Gaza, a political process with the Palestinians and a reconfigured security structure for the Middle East. What it did succeed in doing is influence a premature, arguably reckless, attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon in mid-October, and a callous invasion of Rafah as recently as May.

At the same time, the dissolution of the war cabinet forum deprives Netanyahu of his legitimacy and constricts his manoeuvring room. Now the US has no political allies nor a forum to engage with.

The dissolution may not affect policy, but it weakens Netanyahu politically even more than he already is. He owns not only the 7 October debacle, not only the management of the war, but also the weeks ahead – and now he faces them alone.

Alon Pinkas served as Israel’s consul general in New York from 2000 to 2004. He is now a columnist for Haaretz