JERUSALEM / ISTANBUL

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Monday froze senior military appointments, a day after Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir dismissed several top officers without consulting him over failures to prevent the Oct. 7, 2023 events, according to Israeli media.

Israeli officials widely view the Oct. 7 events as the country’s biggest intelligence and military failure, causing severe damage to Israel’s image and its army’s credibility.

Katz deepened his dispute with Zamir by ordering a broad new review of findings issued by the Turgeman Committee and freezing senior army appointments amid continuing turmoil over the failures of Oct. 7, 2023, the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

On Sunday, Zamir dismissed several senior officers and reprimanded others, including former Military Intelligence chief Aharon Haliva, former Southern Command head Yaron Finkelman, and former Operations Directorate chief Oded Basyuk.

These officers had already been removed from their command posts earlier, but the new measures fully terminate their reservist status.

Zamir also dismissed Gaza Division reserve commander Avi Rosenfeld, while the division’s intelligence officer was expelled from the army altogether, according to the public broadcaster KAN.

Other senior officers, including Air Force commander Tomer Bar, current Military Intelligence chief Shlomi Binder, and Navy commander David Saar Salama, received “leadership remarks”, but were not dismissed.

Yedioth Ahronoth said Katz first learned of Zamir’s decisions through media reports.

The paper added that Katz instructed Defense Ministry comptroller Brig. Gen. (res.) Yair Volansky to conduct a deeper review of the report produced by the committee led by Maj. Gen. (res.) Sami Turgeman, a former head of the Southern Command who oversaw the military’s investigations into the October 2023 events.

Katz said the comptroller would be asked to set unified standards for determining personal accountability.

He also ordered the findings to be presented within 30 days, after which he will decide his final position on senior military appointments under his authority, the paper reported.

That timeline could extend the freeze on key appointments for more than a month, according to the newspaper.

Commenting on the growing rift, former Defense Minister and opposition leader Avigdor Lieberman said: “Yesterday a new front opened – between the defense minister and the chief of staff.”

Lieberman warned at a Knesset press conference that “politicizing the army will destroy the entire defense establishment.”

Since Zamir took office in March 2025, the two officials have repeatedly clashed, including on new appointments in August 2024 made without prior coordination and Katz’s attempt last October to appoint his military secretary Guy Markezano as Israel’s defense attaché in Washington, a move Zamir rejected.

Since October 2023, the Israeli army has killed nearly 70,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, and injured over 170,900 during a two-year war that reduced most of the enclave to rubble.