If Hezbollah had attacked on Oct. 7, its 'pick-ups' would have reached Haifa, according to General Halevi

The outgoing chief of staff of the Israeli army, General Herzi Halevi, continued to make headlines as his announced March 6 resignation at the end of January approaches. Just a few days after being filmed suggesting that Israel contemplated bombing the funeral of former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the senior officer this time stated that the party could have reached the coastal city of Haifa, located a few dozen kilometers from the Israeli-Lebanese border, if it had attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the day of the offensive by Hamas that sparked the war in Gaza.

“If Nasrallah had attacked at that moment, we could have had Radwan's pick-ups in Haifa,” said Halevi, referring to Hezbollah's elite unit. These statements were reported by the Israeli Channel 12 and relayed by several Israeli media outlets, including i24 News and Israel National News.

Read more

Eyal Zamir, new chief of staff in a post-Oct. 7 Israel

Channel 12's report, broadcast over the weekend, focused on the events of Oct. 7 as experienced on the Israeli side, specifically from the perspective of the military headquarters. According to i24 News, the chief of staff's comments on the events of that day and claims that, up until 12:30 p.m., there was genuine strategic panic in Israel concerning the possibility of a second front of war opening in the north of the country. This concern was fueled by a conversation that had taken place several months earlier between the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, according to other elements of the report.

On Saturday, Channel 12 revealed that a document containing warning signs of the attack was sent to Israeli intelligence services at 3:30 a.m., a few hours before the start of the offensive. That same day, the office of Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged that the prime minister's intelligence officer received a memo from the Israeli army detailing suspicious Hamas activities three hours before the invasion and assault by the Islamist group on Oct. 7, 2023, and that he did not forward it. The office argued that this decision was justified because the document was not urgent.

The broadcast of Channel 12's report came two days after State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman stated that the outgoing chief of staff of the army and the director of the Shin Bet intelligence service, Ronen Bar, were preventing his office from conducting an audit on “the main failure” of the organizations' management of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. The senior official spoke during a convention on Thursday, in which he mentioned a series of investigations carried out by his office on the failures that occurred before and during the attack.

Often criticized by far-right figures in the Israeli government, Halevi is handing over his position on Thursday to Major General Eyal Zamir.

This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.