Israeli soldiers ride in a military jeep, near the Israel-Gaza border. (Credit: Amir Cohen/Reuters)
Israel announced on Thursday that it will be appointing Brigadier General Shlomi Binder as the new chief of the army’s Military Intelligence Directorate, and Brigadier General Avi Bluth as head of the Central Commands. The new appointments follow the resignations of former military intelligence chief Major General Aharon Haliva on April 22 and of former Central Command chief Major General Yehuda Fox, who recently announced he was ending a 36-year-long military career.
Binder, who currently serves as head of the Operations division, previously served as commander of the 91st Division, also known as the Galilee Formation, in northern Israel, along the border with Lebanon. He held that post for more than two and a half years. Near the end of his time in that position, he did an interview with Haaretz during which he said that he sees Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as “rational, but not necessarily with our rationality.”
“Is he sane and judicious in making his decisions? In my opinion, yes. The question is whether that leads to expected decisions from our point of view – and the answer is: not always. I have a certain cognitive difficulty in trying to understand him: I am an Israeli, not a Lebanese Shi’ite,” he told writer Amos Harel in the April 2022 interview.
Bluth, soon to be the new Central Command chief, is currently commander of the Judea and Samaria Division, also known as the West Bank Division. In February 2023, Haaretz reported that Bluth had distributed among his officers a book titled “Ours in Tabu: The Secrets of Land Redeemers From Our Father Abraham to the Young Settlements,”
The Israeli Tabu is the body in charge of registering real estate, property, or land action in the Bureau’s official books.
According to the Haaretz report, Bluth added a dedication in the book saying he hoped it would help his officers better understand “land status issues” in the West Bank.
Officers need to “have expertise and knowledge in many fields above and beyond military ones. Settlement and the status of the land is one such field, knowledge of which is required to fulfill your task,” the dedication reads.
Over 700,000 Israeli settlers are living illegally in 279 Israeli settlements across the Occupied West Bank, according to a March 2023 UN report. At least 147 of those settlements are outposts, illegal even under Israeli domestic law.