Israel’s Military Spy Chief Resigns Over Oct. 7 Hamas Attack

TEL AVIV—Israel’s military spy chief resigned Monday, becoming the first senior official to step down over intelligence failures that enabled the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7 that sparked the war in Gaza.

The resignation of Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, the head of the military’s intelligence directorate and a 38-year veteran of the military, illustrates the growing sense among many Israelis that the country’s leaders need to be held accountable for the security and intelligence failures that led to the war and the chaotic aftermath of the invasion of Gaza. Israel has battered Hamas’s forces, and much of the Gaza Strip is now in rubble, but many of the group’s leaders have held on to power and dozens of hostages taken on Oct. 7 remain in the group’s captivity.

Israeli observers had expected senior military officials to remain in their posts while Israel fought the war and that a reckoning would come afterward. Thousands of protesters, however, in recent weeks have called on the government to resign as frustrations boiled over.

Some Israelis, including families of the hostages and survivors of the attack, have called for more senior Israeli leaders to take responsibility for the intelligence failure. Though some officials have apologized for allowing the attack, none resigned while the military and security establishment mobilized during the war.

Within Israel, Haliva is broadly considered one of the top Israeli officials shouldering blame for the intelligence and operational failure that resulted in Hamas’s ability to attack with impunity. Israeli security analysts and media have alleged that Haliva’s military-intelligence directorate shifted resources away from Hamas before the attack and dismissed warning signs of Hamas’s impending assault.

Haliva said he felt that it was the right time to retire, as investigations into the security breach pick up pace. “The Intelligence Directorate under my command did not stand up to its mission” regarding Hamas’s attack, Haliva said in a statement.

Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7 killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials. Israel’s subsequent air-and-ground campaign has killed 34,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to local health officials. The numbers don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.

Although Israel’s military has already begun some internal assessments related to the attack, the country has largely deferred investigating its top leaders and public institutions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who hasn’t taken personal responsibility for the intelligence and security failures around the attack, has promised to look into the matter after the end of the war in Gaza.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid, who isn’t a member of Israel’s wartime cabinet, praised Haliva’s decision as “justified and honorable” and said Netanyahu should have stepped down as well.

The spy chief’s resignation came as Israeli officials worked over the weekend to head off potential U.S. sanctions against an Israeli military unit accused of human-rights abuses. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week said the U.S. was deliberating whether to apply to Israel a law that prohibits U.S. aid to foreign security forces that have committed human-rights violations, and planned to announce results soon.

In phone calls over the weekend, Israeli officials pressed Blinken to advocate against applying the military-aid restrictions on Netzah Yehuda, an ultraorthodox Israeli military unit accused of offenses against West Bank Palestinians before the war began.

“The Israel Defense Forces must not be sanctioned!” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on Saturday on X. Applying sanctions against an Israeli military unit during the war with Hamas would be the “height of absurdity and a moral low,” he wrote.

The intention to potentially sanction an Israeli military unit was widely condemned in Israel over the weekend, but reflects growing American pressure on Israel over how it is prosecuting the war in Gaza, even while the Biden administration offers broad military support to its ally.

The U.S. has said it would defend Israel’s security and helped this month to fend off a massive missile-and-drone attack by Iran. The Biden administration is considering more than $1 billion in new weapons deals for its ally. The House of Representatives over the weekend separately passed a $26 billion funding bill for Israel.

But the U.S. also has become more critical of how Netanyahu is managing the war and how much aid Israel is allowing into Gaza to alleviate a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave.

The potential decision to sanction an Israeli military unit is another example of the Biden administration’s attempt to corral Israel on specific policy points while continuing to back it militarily, said Sanam Vakil, a Middle East expert at Chatham House think tank in London.

“The U.S. remains 100% lockstep committed to Israel’s security,” Vakil said. “But there are deep differences in how Israel executes its policy in Gaza.”

Netzah Yehuda is a unique unit within the Israeli military, created in 1999 as a way to entice more ultra-Orthodox Jewish Israelis, known as Haredim, to serve. Its soldiers have been convicted of using electrocution to torture Palestinian detainees and disciplined for allowing an elderly Palestinian-American man to die in their custody. The military in 2022 moved the unit out of the West Bank amid allegations of abuses.

Since the war in Gaza began, however, Netzah Yehuda has operated in the West Bank, against Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border and against Hamas in Gaza, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said in a statement Monday.

“They are risking their lives,” Gallant said of the unit’s soldiers after speaking with Blinken and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew. The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem declined to comment.

Jacob Nagel, a former Israeli national security adviser, said officials were working to persuade the U.S. not to take action against Netzah Yehuda because it could lead to other measures in the future against the Israeli military.

“The United States cannot sanction a group inside the IDF because next month they will sanction one of our air-force units,” he said. “You start, you don’t know where you finish.”

Write to Rory Jones at [email protected] and Jared Malsin at [email protected]