Palestinians queue for a ration of hot food at a charity kitchen set up on the campus of the Islamic University in Gaza City, on May 12, 2025. (Credit: Omar al-Qattaa/AFP)
Former Israeli military intelligence chief Aharon Haliva, who was in office during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack and has been blamed for failing to prevent it, said the human toll in the Gaza Strip is “necessary,” adding that “[Palestinians] need a Nakba every once in a while,” according to a series of undated recordings aired Friday night by Israeli Channel 12, Israeli media reported.
The Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” refers to 1948, when about 760,000 Palestinian Arabs were violently expelled and displaced from their homes during Israel's occupation of Palestine. In the Columbia Law Review, Palestinian legal scholar Rabea Eghbariah argued for recognition of the Nakba as a concept in international law and genocide studies to better understand what he described as the “domination regime in Palestine.”
“The fact that there are already 50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations,” Haliva said, though the Health Ministry in Gaza puts the death toll at more than 61,000. “For everything that happened on Oct. 7, for every person killed on Oct. 7, 50 Palestinians must die,” he said.
“I am not saying this out of revenge, but as a message to future generations,” he added. “They need a Nakba from time to time in order to feel the consequences. There is no alternative in this deranged neighborhood.”
A May poll by Penn State University found that 82 percent of Israeli Jews supported the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza.
‘Hamas is good for Israel’
Haliva also accused the Israeli government of deliberately allowing Hamas to rise to “fight freely.”
He said a plan drafted after the 2014 Gaza war to dismantle Hamas “was never considered for implementation.” Instead, he argued, some leaders embraced the idea that “Hamas is good for Israel — that’s the argument of [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich,” according to remarks cited by the Times of Israel. Haliva claimed the far-right minister seeks to dismantle the Palestinian Authority and allow Hamas to take over the West Bank.
“Why? Because if the whole Palestinian arena is destabilized and goes insane, it is impossible to negotiate with, and there will be no agreement,” he said. “Who decided to differentiate Gaza from the West Bank? The prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu]!”
Haliva, who resigned in April 2024, six months after Oct. 7, accused Netanyahu of enabling Hamas’s rule in Gaza, which took power in the 2006 legislative elections following Israel’s 2005 withdrawal.
“He wants Hamas, which is far worse than the PA. Why does he want Hamas? Because the PA has international status,” Haliva said. “Hamas is an organization that can be fought freely. It has no international justification, no legitimacy. You can fight it with the sword.”
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