Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

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.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.