Benjamin Netanyahu has fired Yoav Gallant, his defence minister, amid a row over the direction of the war.

The prime minister of Israel will replace Gallant with Israel Katz, who was foreign minister, after the surprise sacking.

Mr Gallant had long complained that Israel was fighting with no clear end goal and, hours before Israel struck Iran last month, published a letter arguing the war had become aimless.

Gideon Sa’ar will take over from Mr Katz as foreign minister.

Mr Netanyahu cited a lack of trust between himself and Gallant and said that their relationship had “cracked”.

“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 defence minister,” he said.

Mr Netanyahu added that they had disagreed on the handling of the war and had grown apart.

“I made many attempts to bridge these gaps, but they kept getting wider,” he said. “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.”