Netanyahu’s ‘war cabinet’ had little power

It represented a forum he could conveniently castigate when things went wrong. Now the blame can only go in one direction

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.

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