IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir has evaluated all of the key fronts faced by the military in his first nearly 60 days since taking the IDF’s helm and reached a number of important conclusions, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
Regarding aid to Gaza, Zamir’s position is that the IDF cannot allow Palestinian civilians to starve, cannot be directly involved in distributing food aid, and cannot allow Hamas to control the food aid.
As such, his position is that international groups and private companies should distribute food aid, though he believes in leaving the choice of which groups to the political echelon.
Food aid may end up restarting just as the IDF significantly increases its operations in Gaza.
Despite wide debates in Israel about what the primary goal of the war is at this point, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicating that defeating Hamas comes before returning the hostages, Zamir’s view is that returning the hostages is the primary goal, with defeating Hamas secondary.
It is not completely clear how he equates this view with Israel’s decision to refuse recent Hamas offers to return half of the living hostages for multiple months of a temporary ceasefire, as well as the rest of the hostages in exchange for an end to the war.
Regarding the second round of evaluating the October 7 probes that Zamir ordered to be undertaken by IDF Maj.-Gen. (res.) Sami Turgeman, his view is that the goal should be to lift the military up moving forward, and not looking backward.
Although various right-wing coalition officials were hopeful that Zamir would fire a large range of officials viewed as moderate within the IDF, this view of Zamir suggests that he will not.
Zamir has been characterized as firing former IDF spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Daniel Hagari and appointed Major Generals Tamir Yadai and Yaniv Asor as his deputy IDF chief and Southern Command chief after they were on the outs with former IDF chief Herzi Halevi.
Zamir has yet to fire many likely responsible for October 7 failures
But other than those moves, Zamir has so far fired few officials relating to October 7 and many of the top IDF officials accused of having a primary hand in the failure resigned on their own between March 2024 and March of this year.
Of course, until Zamir receives Turgeman’s recommendations, the issue remains open.
Also, Zamir’s view is that while some of the prior October 7 probes were performed at high levels, some were negligent, and Turgeman will need to redo them.
During Zamir’s tenure and including some periods just before, the IDF has racked up some statistics regarding attacking adversaries.
Over 400 Gazan fighters have been killed since renewed hostilities and around 1,800 targets have been struck, though it is unclear how significant some of those targets have been.
Over 140 Hezbollah fighters have been killed and over 350 Hezbollah targets struck by the IDF since the November 2024 ceasefire.
Over 100 West Bank terrorists have been killed and around 320 suspects arrested since March 18’s renewed hostilities in Gaza.
All signs from Zamir are that there is no deadline for the IDF to withdraw from its five positions inside Lebanon or its nine positions inside Syria.
He appears ready to use these positions and unlimited IDF aerial superiority in those countries to continue to strike and weaken threats and potential threats facing Israel.
In order to accomplish the IDF’s tasks on so many fronts, he is pushing hard to recruit haredim into the IDF.
Zamir believes the IDF is short 7,000 fighters and 10,000 soldiers total from losses during the war and expanded security threats.
He hopes that a mix of the 24,000 summons the IDF has sent to already eligible haredi recruits and the fact that the IDF will now send draft notices to every haredi male who reaches the age of 16.5 will make a difference.
At the same time, Zamir thinks that the government and Israeli society must resolve this 77-year-old issue.
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