Teaming up for another term with reelected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon has held onto his powerful post after two years of relative stability.

The tall, bespectacled 64-year-old's appearance, more akin to that of an accountant than the former commando he is, belies his hardline beliefs, including the idea of a Greater Israel encompassing all of the occupied Palestinian territories.

Yaalon's scorn for Middle East peace efforts earned him publicity and Washington's ire in 2014, during the last round of failed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

The defence minister described US Secretary of State John Kerry, the driving force behind the resumption of talks, as having a messianic "obsession" with forging a peace deal to pave the way for a two-state solution.

Those remarks drew a sharp rebuke from the State Department and he was later forced to apologise.

Several months later, a year and a half into the job, Yaalon showed he was not afraid of overseeing combat as Israel launched a 50-day operation against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, a war that killed 2,200 Palestinians and 73 on the Israeli side.

He resisted calls from far-right cabinet ministers to completely topple Hamas, which would have seen a ground invasion of Gaza extended even longer.

And while he is adamant that Israel's arch-foe Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, he urged restraint during talk of a possible strike on Tehran's atomic facilities in 2012.

Domestically, he has long championed Jewish settlement expansion on occupied Palestinian territory, but has somewhat disappointed hardcore settlement supporters since being in office.

After making a name for himself by opposing Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, he spoke out forcefully against any freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank.

In August 2009, he urged Netanyahu, also prime minister at the time, to resist US demands for a settlement freeze, and as defence minister was expected to deploy his power to advance the settler movement.

But settler leaders say that while new construction grew in 2013, settlement building returned to a relatively low growth rate in 2014.

Chief of staff at the height of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, Yaalon entered politics in November 2008, joining Netanyahu's Likud party.

He was appointed minister of strategic affairs in the 2009-2013 coalition.

Born in 1950 in the northern port city of Haifa, Yaalon performed his compulsory military service between 1968 and 1971, returning to active duty as a paratrooper during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

After serving in an elite commando unit in the 1970s and 80s, Yaalon became military intelligence chief a decade later.

He was head of the army's central command with responsibility for the West Bank before being named chief of staff.

Yaalon is married with three children.