IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi said he would resign on March 6, he wrote to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday.
He will step down after two years and two months in office, about 10 months earlier than the standard three-year term.
Halevi said he is resigning in keeping with his promise since October 2023 that he would take responsibility for the October 7 failure.
In a speech later Tuesday, the chief of staff called for a state commission of inquiry to cover all of the issues relating to national security that are beyond the authority and control of the IDF.
Without explaining, he also alluded to the possibility of other entities that could potentially probe the wider issues of the failure, including the government and the decisions of Netanyahu himself.=
Despite the failures, Halevi noted his and the military’s recent successes, including against Hezbollah in Lebanon, against the Assad regime in Syria, against Iran, and in defeating Hamas’s 24 battalions as well as forcing Hamas into the hostage exchange deal that started this week.
More specifically, he said the IDF had killed nearly 20,000 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad forces in Gaza, around 4,000 Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, and 794 terrorists in the West Bank.
In addition, the IDF chief said during his tenure, the military managed to hold down terror in the West Bank to low enough levels, which allowed the military to focus most of its efforts on the two major fronts with Hamas and Hezbollah.
War aims are still open
The chief of staff recognized that the country’s war aims are still open, including eliminating Hamas’s political control of Gaza and returning the remaining 94 hostages as part of restoring Israeli deterrence vis-à-vis its adversaries.
Halevi said he would spend the next six weeks making sure to issue the military’s report on the October 7 failures as well as managing the current ceasefire and potential transition to a permanent ceasefire.
Further, he said he wanted to transfer management of the IDF while the security situation has the military in the strongest and most stable situation it has been in since October 7, 2023.
Within minutes of the announcement, Southern Command chief Maj.-Gen. Yaron Finkelman also announced his resignation.
Unlike the IDF chief, he did not give a date but suggested the date could be selected by Halevi or his successor.Finkelman had only been Southern Command chief for a few months before October 7, such that his resignation would end his term much earlier even than the chief of staff’s.
Katz has been trying, according to all observers under orders from Netanyahu, to push the IDF chief out since he took over the Defense Ministry from Yoav Gallant on November 6.
In fact, Katz has even frozen his appointments within the IDF now for successive months, shackling his power and weakening his authority within the military.
Most analysts say Netanyahu wants to blame most of the October 7 failure on Halevi as the IDF issues its probe into that failure while avoiding any state inquiry into his own actions as the architect of containing Hamas and facilitating it receiving funds from Qatar while prime minister for most of the 2009-2023 period.
Sources confirmed once again on Tuesday night that Netanyahu has no intention of resigning like the other major players of the October 7 security failures.
A large question had been whether the IDF chief would call for a state commission of inquiry as his former intelligence chief, Aharon Haliva, did when he resigned in August 2024.
Despite their relatively undisguised attempts to oust him, both Netanyahu and Katz praised the IDF chief for his decision to resign and for his decades of service to the military.
National Unity Party leader, former IDF chief, former commander, and Halevi’s appointer Benny Gantz praised the chief of staff for taking responsibility for October 7 and called on Netanyahu to do so as well, saying his party would again propose on Wednesday a bill for a state commission of inquiry.
Separate from Netanyahu, many IDF officers said they believed the chief of staff stayed on for too long in light of the October 7 failures, while others supported him to ensure a hostage deal would take place despite Netanyahu’s perceived opposition to such a deal.
Candidates for the position
The lead candidate to replace Halevi is Eyal Zamir, who currently serves as Defense Ministry director-general, is a former deputy IDF chief and came in second place during the last race for chief of staff.
Zamir was also the favored candidate of Netanyahu at the time, though Yair Lapid was the prime minister at that point, and then-defense minister Gantz made the call to appoint the current chief of staff.
Another top candidate is outgoing Deputy IDF Chief of Staff Maj.-Gen. Amir Baram, who did not get along with Halevi and was closer to Halevi’s predecessor, Aviv Kohavi.
Yet another possible candidate is Northern Command chief Maj.-Gen. Uri Gordon, who has been viewed as very successful but has also been a major-general for less time than Zamir and Baram.
Katz wasted no time sending out a message that he would immediately start vetting and interviewing candidates for the office of chief of staff. It appears that Katz will select a new chief, likely Zamir, as early as next week. This is much faster than the standard, sometimes multi-month process.
It was unclear what the impact of Halevi’s decision would be on whether IDF Spokesman R.-Adm. Daniel Hagari would remain at his post, being closely associated with him.
Hagari has indicated he will remain in his post if requested by the next chief of staff.
Despite Halevi’s resignation and prior resignations or firings of all key IDF intelligence officials involved in the October 7 failures, as well as the firing of Gallant and a top Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) official connected to the failures, there has been no hint on when Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar will resign.
Bar’s term as Shin Bet chief, at five years, is longer than an IDF chief. Even long-serving chiefs of staff usually only get a one-year extension leading to a four-year term.
This means that whereas Halevi is only giving up 10 months of his term, if Bar were to resign now, he would be giving up 1 year and 10 months of his term, which otherwise would run until October 2026.
In addition, the Shin Bet, unlike the IDF, has been a closed book regarding its October 7 failures.
While the Shin Bet is often more secretive than the IDF, it does share redacted public materials on a regular basis, and there have been many questions about why it has not been more transparent.
One argument has been that Bar believes that Netanyahu and former national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir would do damage to law enforcement and to containing Jewish extremist violence if he stepped down early.
Still, Bar is expected to resign sometime before the end of his term to show he takes responsibility for October 7 as well.
A number of other top IDF officials, including air force chief Tomer Bar and navy chief David Saar Salama, are also expected to resign.
Salama has already been navy chief for more than three years, since September 2021.Bar will reach three years in April.
Mossad Director David Barnea is not expected to step down before the June 2026 end of his term because his agency was not responsible for Gaza like the IDF and the Shin Bet and because he has much better relations with Netanyahu than the other chiefs.