Israeli PM won’t fire defense minister, puts ‘differences behind’ | World News

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that he had decided Leaving Defense Minister Yoav Gallant The earlier decision to sack the minister was reversed in light of the escalating security crisis.

He said the two had resolved their differences over Gallant’s public call last month to halt the government’s deeply divided judicial reform plan, which Gallant said had become a threat to Israel’s security.

Last week, Netanyahu announced he would delay his removal.

“I decided to put aside our differences,” Netanyahu told a news conference on Monday. The two have been working closely together over the past two weeks, he said.

An Italian tourist was killed and five others injured in a car in Tel Aviv on Friday after two Israeli sisters and their mother were killed in a shooting in the occupied West Bank.

The attacks have heightened Israeli-Palestinian tensions following a night of cross-border attacks in Gaza and Lebanon, after Israeli police stormed the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem this week.

when israel passed hit with Islamist group Hamas in Gaza and southern Lebanon, but the fighting went into a lull on Friday.

A Sunday poll by Israel’s Channel 13 showed that if elections were held now, Netanyahu’s Likud party would lose more than a third of its seats and Netanyahu would be unable to compete with his hardline The right-wing coalition partners together secured a majority.

“I am not disturbed by the polls,” Netanyahu told reporters.

The prime minister said relations with the US, strained by the government’s planned judicial reforms, remained “strained” and that the two countries enjoyed security and intelligence cooperation.

Netanyahu’s government has suspended legislation on the reforms to allow compromise discussions with opposition parties after weeks of nationwide protests.