Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his popular defense minister — a key Biden admin contact — in a surprise announcement Tuesday after months of butting heads over the war in Gaza. 

Netanyahu personally handed Yoav Gallant his termination letter after a brief meeting in the premier’s office, the Times of Israel reports. 

“Unfortunately, although in the first months of the war there was trust and there was very fruitful work, during the last months this trust cracked between me and the Defense Minister,” Netanyahu said in a statement. 

“I made many attempts to bridge these gaps, but they kept getting wider,” he added. “They also came to the knowledge of the public in an unacceptable way, and worse than that, they came to the knowledge of the enemy — our enemies enjoyed it and derived a lot of benefit from it.”

Gallant, who is set to be replaced by Foreign Minister Israel Katz, said the security of Israel “always was, and will always remain, my life’s mission.” 

The sudden firing triggered protests in Tel Aviv as the Hostages and Missing Families Forum slammed Gallant’s dismissal as Netayahu’s latest alleged efforts “to torpedo the hostage deal.” 

“The dismissal of the Defense Minister is an unfortunate proof of the Israeli government’s poor set of priorities,” the Forum said in a statement.

Netanyahu allegedly waited for the day of the US elections to fire Gallant so as to avoid blowback from the Biden-Harris administration, who’s currently focused on the polling outcome, a US official told the TOI. 

The officials said the Biden team has been caught off guard by the decision to fire Gallant, who has regularly met with his US counterpart throughout the war.