Israel’s top military intelligence official announced his resignation on Monday over his role in the failures that led to the Hamas terror group’s October 7 onslaught.
Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, chief of the Israel Defense Forces’s Military Intelligence Directorate, will step down from the military once a replacement is appointed, the IDF said.
The move was coordinated with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and approved by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the military added.
Once he quits, Haliva will become the first senior officer in the IDF to resign over the October 7 attack. (Another top intelligence general who was planning to step down over the onslaught quit after being diagnosed with cancer.)
Alongside Haliva, other top defense officials have said they bear responsibility for the deadly invasion carried out by Hamas on October 7, including the head of the Shin Bet security agency and the IDF chief of staff. None of them has announced plans to resign as of yet, though many are expected to do so once the security situation stabilizes.
The timing of Haliva’s resignation comes as the IDF is carrying out investigations into its failures in the lead-up to the Hamas October 7 massacre.
The Intelligence Directorate had split its probes into different periods: a decade before the assault, starting from the end of the 2014 Gaza war; the days before the attack, from October 1 till October 7, with an emphasis on the 36 hours before the onslaught; and the October 7 massacre itself.
Each unit commander in the directorate was probing its actions based on questions determined by the General Staff.
The probes were due to be presented to Halevi by the beginning of June.
Haliva was on vacation in Eilat on October 7. He was reportedly updated at around 3 a.m. that morning regarding “certain signs coming from Gaza” about an imminent attack, but reportedly took no part in consultations in the highest echelons of the IDF regarding those indications and was not available by phone for them.
Haliva was quoted as later telling those around him that, even if he had participated in the consultations, he would have concluded that Hamas was apparently carrying out a drill and that dealing with the matter could wait until the morning. “It wouldn’t have changed the final result in any way,” he reportedly said.
Photo By IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=118872164
Read more via Times of Israel
