IDF chief said to hail approval of ‘painful’ Gaza deal, stress war can resume if needed

In leaked comments from Knesset committee, outgoing IDF chief defends staying on job until now, urges ‘effective sanctions’ against Haredi draft dodgers

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi attends a Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, January 28, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi attends a Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, January 28, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Outgoing IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said Tuesday that the government made the right decision in accepting the “painful” Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, adding that the army would “make an effort for the price to be small” and would be able to resume fighting if the agreement collapsed, according to leaked comments from the closed-door Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

Halevi, who announced last week that he would resign on March 6 in light of his failures ahead of the October 7, 2023 Hamas onslaught, said that stepping down right after the attack “would have damaged the war effort.”

“The military had to be led,” Halevi said.

Halevi reportedly told the committee that the IDF was determined to complete as quickly as possible its probe of failures leading up to the onslaught when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251hostages.

The investigation could still take some time because the army insists on performing it “while fighting on seven fronts, without making errors or cutting corners… even if it takes two extra weeks,” he said, according to the reports.

He stressed that the army would not keep information “from any authority, including the state comptroller,” Haaretz reported, citing people who were at the meeting.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, center-right, meets with officers in southern Lebanon, December 29, 2024. (IDF)

Defense Minister Israel Katz has accused Halevi of dragging his feet on the army’s probes of the October 7 onslaught, and ordered the general to “fully cooperate” with a probe by State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman, who had blasted the army’s conduct in the investigation.

Englman’s probe is not a high-level state commission of inquiry, the establishment of which has thus far been rejected by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and most members of his government.

At cabinet meetings throughout the Gaza war, ministers have also gotten into multiple shouting matches with Halevi, according to Hebrew media.

IDF chief Herzi Halevi (L to R), Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and IAF chief of staff Omer Tischler at the IAF’s underground command center at the military headquarters in Tel Aviv on December 26, 2024. (IDF)

Speaking to the Knesset committee on Tuesday, Halevi said he “appreciates greatly that you challenge us,” but added that “there were officers who came out of here and felt disrespected,” Army Radio reported.

He was said to add that the January 18 cabinet meeting that ratified the deal “was a civics lesson that should be shown to every student,” and that though there were disagreements about the way to do so, “everyone wanted to bring back the hostages.”

“We reached the deal because of the military pressure” on Gaza, he said, adding that “we’re proud to be a nation that says ‘go back to get the hostages’… It’s our duty to do everything to bring them back.”

Israel and Hamas are currently in the 42-day first phase of the deal, in which the terror group is to release 33 women, children, men over 50 and those considered especially unhealthy, in return for some 1,904 Palestinian prisoners.

Negotiators have not yet hammered out the deal’s second phase, when Israel is expected to fully withdraw from the Gaza Strip.

Should the deal’s next phases not materialize, Halevi said the IDF “will know how to resume fighting forcefully and cannily,” according to Channel 12.

Turning to Lebanon, where the IDF recently extended its deadline for withdrawal following the November 27 ceasefire with Hezbollah, Halevi said “there must not be a border-adjacent threat, and this must be enforced in a very powerful fashion,” Army Radio reported.

The 14-month war with Hezbollah, in which Israel all but decimated the terror group’s leadership, had a “direct link” with the Syrian rebel offensive that toppled Hezbollah’s fellow Iran client Assad, Halevi said, according to Army Radio.

“We ended the Shiite Axis’s geographical coherence,” he reportedly said, referring to Iran’s proxies. Hinting at possible operations in Syria, where Israel has moved into a formerly demilitarized buffer zone, Halevi was said to add: “We’re watching events in Syria carefully [and] won’t be afraid to act if required.”

Halevi was also quoted claiming success in the West Bank, where the IDF launched a wide-scale operation last week a day after an IDF reservist was killed in a terror attack: “Every terror attack is hard, but the data over the past years indicates a drop in both unorganized and organized terrorism. [We’re] conducting a very intense counterterrorism maneuver in the West Bank.”

Troops of the Kfir Brigade operate in the northern Gaza Strip, in a handout photo issued by the IDF on January 7, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)

Haredi draft a ‘distinct security need’

Halevi said the IDF needs to “grow by ten thousand soldiers, including a significant proportion of combat troops,” and that while the army could accommodate growing numbers of ultra-Orthodox troops, it would be unable to draft many without penalties against those who refuse to enlist, according to Haaretz.

Some of Netanyahu’s Haredi coalition partners have rejected measures against draft dodgers from their community, and threatened to topple the government if a compromise is not reached on the issue.

Halevi reportedly said that “getting Haredi leadership on board is important, but without effective sanctions it will be hard to make the difference,” adding that Haredi enlistment had become “a distinct security need” due to the “price of the war.”

More friendly approaches over the years “led to very low enlistment rates,” he said, Channel 12 reported.

This year, the military can recruit 4,800 Haredim, while next year that number will grow by 20%, and in 2027 “we will be able to absorb everybody,” he said, according to Haaretz. Haredi leaders are demanding much smaller numbers.

Ultra-Orthodox protesters sit on a road, blocking traffic, in front of a mounted police officer, during a demonstration against the Haredi draft, in Jerusalem, January 28, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

The perennial hot-button issue has become increasingly fraught amid the war in Gaza, and all the more so after a High Court decision in June that there was no legal framework to extend the Haredi community’s decades-long exemption from military service.

Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.

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