Zamir delays Oct. 7 follow-up report after fight with PM over Gaza War, appointments

The report was prepared to assess the quality of the investigations and identify the key lessons to be learned from them.

Following a major fallout with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz over the next stage of the war in Gaza and over IDF appointments, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir on Wednesday night took the highly controversial measure of delaying publication of his follow-up report to the October 7 probes approved by his predecessor, Herzi Halevi.

Zamir’s decision is nearly a complete reversal of his earlier position that it was crucial to rush out specific judgments on the conduct of specific IDF commanders on October 7 in order to lift the cloud still hanging over the military. The IDF chief had been critical of Halevi’s probe for not assigning responsibility to commanders and merely describing the failures of the IDF as an institution.

To further his approach, Zamir had ordered Maj.-Gen. (res.) Sami Turgeman to produce a report providing evidence of personal responsibility on the part of certain commanders for the October 7 failure within only a few months. The IDF’s announcement on Wednesday night only said that the report’s publication needed to be delayed due to the next steps in the Gaza war, which may include an invasion of Gaza City, something which Zamir opposes but that Netanyahu has ordered him to carry out.

The chief of staff opposes the invasion, saying it will achieve little and could seriously endanger the remaining 20 living hostages held by Hamas.

Netanyahu wants to go ahead with the invasion either to further defeat Hamas and to prolong the war, or to keep his government from falling, or a mix of both.

Following Zamir’s opposition, Katz froze a large number of Zamir’s promotions of officers to senior levels just below the IDF high command; these promotions are a core part of the IDF chief’s role and are required from time to time to keep the army running and to prevent officers from deciding to retire.

On Tuesday, the chief of staff received the first direct feedback from Katz about which appointments he may block.

October 7 failures

Within less than 24 hours of that meeting, Zamir had suddenly frozen the publication of Turgeman’s report, a report that Katz could use to more easily block certain appointments of officers who might have great records generally but potentially had a role in the October 7 failures.

The IDF chief may also have thought that he did not have problems with State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman like his predecessor Halevi did, since Zamir is not viewed as on the hook for the October 7 failures. However, Zamir has now started to fight Englman as well over access to information and because the state comptroller published certain conclusions without some IDF officers getting to respond as fully as they would like.

All of this could also harm Zamir’s appointments, and it appears he also fears that Netanyahu may try to use the comptroller report to clean his hands of responsibility for October 7 while dumping most of the blame on the defense establishment. The chief of staff did not even provide a new date when the report will be published, meaning that even two years after October 7, there will still likely be no report officially flagging personal responsibility on specific officers.

Originally, Zamir wanted the military to look forward and move on from October 7, but he also wanted some officers held responsible.

In the evolving playing field, he now seems to have signaled that Turgeman’s report could create more problems for the military than it will solve.