Israel’s military intelligence chief resigns over October 7 attack failures
Aharon Haliva, the head of Israel’s military intelligence, is the first senior official figure to step down over the failures surrounding Hamas’s attack.
The Israeli military said in a statement the military chief of staff accepted Haliva’s resignation and thanked him for his service. The move could set the stage for more of Israel’s top security brass to accept blame for not preventing the attack and step down.
Haliva said in October that he shouldered responsibility for not preventing the attack that broke through Israel’s vaunted defences. At least 1,139 Israelis were killed and hundreds captured and taken back to Gaza.
The aftermath of an attack on the Supernova music festival in the Negev desert in southern Israel
The army said in a statement Major-General Aharon Haliva asked to end his service “following his leadership responsibility” after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
Haliva, as well as other military and security officials, were widely expected to resign in response to the glaring failures that led to the attack. But the timing of the resignations is unclear because Israel is still fighting Hamas in Gaza to the south and battling Hezbollah in Lebanon to the north. Tensions with Iran are also high following tit-for-tat attacks.
While Haliva and others have accepted blame for failing to stop the October attack, others have stopped short, most notably Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said he would answer tough questions about his role but has not outright acknowledged any responsibility for allowing the attack to unfold.
Israeli military releases intelligence chief’s resignation letter
The resignation letter from Major-General Aharon Haliva has been provided to journalists.
“On Saturday, October 7th 2023, Hamas committed a deadly surprise attack against the state of Israel. The intelligence division under my command did not live up to the task we were entrusted with,” he said.
“I carry that black day with me ever since. Day after day, night after night. I will forever carry with me the terrible pain of the war.”
Haliva is the first high-ranking official to step down for failing to prevent the attack.
Pressure on Israeli intelligence chief ‘was immense’
The resignation of Israel’s military intelligence chief was expected, and now political leaders are likely to feel increased pressure to assume the blame for Hamas’s October attack.
Political analyst Yossi Mekelberg noted members of the military leadership said they would resign once the war on Gaza was over. But as the conflict drags on with no end in sight, Aharon Haliva’s move to quit seemed inevitable.
“Something is rotten in the kingdom of Israeli intelligence,” Mekelberg, associate fellow at the British think tank Chatham House, told Al Jazeera. “The pressure on Haliva was immense” – not just for the October 7 failures, but also for intelligence on what would have been the Iranian response to a suspected Israeli attack on its consular building in Damascus, which pushed the region to the brink of war.
“They left the country and the region on edge – it seems that no one warned against the possibility of more than 300 missiles, including ballistic, against Israel,” Mekelberg added.
While it is not clear whether the resignation will pave the way for more military officials to do the same, it will put pressure on the political leadership to accept responsibility, he said. Admitting responsibility for October 7 has long been a thorny issue in the Israeli leadership as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not yet accepted blame.
Israeli military intelligence got it ‘spectacularly wrong’
Major-General Aharon Haliva says in his resignation letter the military’s intelligence division did not live up to the task it was entrusted with. He said we know now there was a major failure of intelligence that allowed Hamas to get away with this large-scale attack on Israeli territory.
Up to a year before, Israeli intelligence got its hands on a Hamas document that accurately laid out the plans for the October 7 attack. We know Israeli military spotters watching from the towers around Gaza in the weeks and months leading up to the infiltration had said they’d seen Hamas battalions preparing for some sort of assault.
All of this was ignored at the very highest levels of the military and the government because there was this belief that Hamas was not interested in launching an assault on Israel. That Hamas was more interested in managing Gaza.
They got that spectacularly wrong. The head of military intelligence has accepted responsibility for that.
Hmm that sounds fishy that they believed Hamas was more interested in managing Gaza. It was more arrogance and not believing Hamas could pull off the scale of the attack. Israel bombed Gaza in May and performed other provocations right before October. They were drawing out a response, yet now claim they didn't think Hamas was interested in responding while having the plans laid out in front of them and seen the preparations?
No it was arrogance. They didn't think Hamas could breach the fence so quickly and effectively and overwhelm the border military outposts.
