The chief of Israeli military intelligence steps down, citing a failure to stop Hamas’ October 7 strike

Being involved in the deadliest strike in Israel’s history, the chief of the military intelligence directorate resigned on Monday due to failings surrounding Hamas’ extraordinary October 7 attack, according to the IDF. He is the first senior person to do so.

The resignation of Major General Aharon Haliva paves the way for additional fallout from Israel’s top security brass over the attack by Hamas, in which militants broke through Israel’s border defenses and ransacked Israeli communities for hours on end, killing 1,200 people—mostly civilians—and capturing about 250 hostages into Gaza. The seven-month conflict in Gaza against Hamas began with that incident.

Haliva had taken on the responsibility in public.
Haliva had requested to leave the military “following his leadership responsibility,” according to a statement from the military. Haliva, as chief of the military department in charge of daily alerts and intelligence warnings to the government and military, had publicly said shortly after the conflict that he had responsibility for not stopping the attack.

The statement from the military added that Haliva’s request to resign was approved and that he was congratulated for his service by the military chief of staff.

rush of resignations was anticipated
It was generally anticipated that Haliva would step down, along with other high-ranking military and security officials, due to the obvious shortcomings that both caused and enabled the October 7 assault to be so catastrophic. The timing of the resignations is uncertain, however, since Israel continues to combat Hezbollah, a terrorist organization based in northern Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza. In addition, tensions with Iran remain high in the wake of the two adversaries’ strikes.

While Haliva and others have taken responsibility for their inability to avert the assault, others have not gone so far. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, has said he would respond to pointed questions about his involvement but has not explicitly admitted any guilt for enabling the incident to happen.