Israel navy intelligence head Aharon Haliva resigns over Hamas assault | EUROtoday

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Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, head of the Israel Defense Forces’ intelligence division, resigned from his place and can retire, he stated in a press release Monday, citing Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on Israel because the driving power.

Haliva is the primary common of the IDF workers to depart his place due to the failures that led to the assault and the conflict in Gaza, Israeli media reported. The shock assault killed an estimated 1,200 individuals, the biggest lack of life in a single day within the nation’s historical past. Militants additionally took 253 hostages again to Gaza.

“The military intelligence directorate under my command did not live up to our mission,” Haliva stated in a letter shared by the IDF. The doc was titled “Responsibility and Termination of Position.”

Referring to the Hamas assault, Haliva wrote that he has “been carrying that black day ever since, day and night. I will live with the horrible pain of the war every day.”

For greater than a 12 months, Hamas strategically deliberate its assault on Israel, following battle plans constructed on open-source supplies, Israeli intelligence officers stated in December.

The assault shocked Israelis and instantly raised questions in regards to the nation’s intelligence and protection capabilities. The Washington Post reported final 12 months that regardless of data coming to mild in August that an assault was imminent, warnings have been dismissed, and the communities on the Israeli aspect of the border have been by no means notified a couple of risk.

Haliva, who has served within the navy for 38 years, will formally go away the position as soon as his successor is appointed, the IDF stated.

Monday’s act of contrition is just not new for Haliva, who, simply 10 days after the Hamas assault, took accountability for the intelligence failures that led to the assault.

“In all my visits to Military Intelligence Directorate units in the last 11 days, I sat down and stressed that the beginning of the war was an intelligence failure,” Haliva stated in October, including that the navy intelligence directorate, underneath his command, “failed to warn of the terrorist attack.”

In the months because the conflict, anger has flared at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has shied away from accepting any accountability for the intelligence failures that led to the unprecedented cross-border assault by Hamas.

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving chief, has largely refused to handle a key query: What accountability does he bear for the safety lapses that allowed the militants to storm Israeli communities in October, destroying properties and killing civilians.

Lior Soroka contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/22/israel-intelligence-haliva-hamas-failure/