IDF chief, Minister Katz announce advancement in appointment talks

TSAhal sources have told the “post” that the meeting said the appointments that were already in consensus between the two senior defense officials.

The Minister of Defense Israel Katz and the chief of staff of the lieutenant-general. Eyal Zamir published a joint statement on Tuesday, saying that they met to discuss the appointment of new brigadiers-general and colonels, which are higher ranks below the high level of command of the FDI.

On the one hand, their meeting represents real progress towards the resolution of the dispute of appointments which broke out between them two weeks ago.

Again, the official declaration has provided almost no detail on specific meetings or the expected process or the time to approve future promotions.

However, ASAhal sources have told Jerusalem Post that the meeting had clarified what appointments were already in consensus between the two senior defense officials and what appointments will be debated and could even lead Katz to press Zamir to make a different decision.

In this vein, the sources of TSAhal remain uncertain about the delay of the Minister of Defense for final approvals, in particular.

The dispute broke out in the context of a much more important and more important background between Zamir and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In fact, this dispute on appointments has nothing to do with the new nominees or the relationship between the two men.

How a disagreement created a friction

The two got along very well for an entire year with two separate capacities until the chief of staff contradicts the story of Netanyahu, which is favorable to the establishment of the city of Gaza and which has potentially taken control of the enclave.

Following Zamir’s “sin” to speak of a new policy which, according to most defense officials, will lead to either the death of the remaining hostages, the death of many more Palestinian soldiers and civilians – harming the legitimacy of Israel without really weakening in the Prime Minister’s process.

It was essentially the same game book that Netanyahu and Katz had used to couple the predecessor of Zamir, Herzi Halevi.

This time, it happened faster than with Halevi.

This happened before Zamir made mistakes that anyone could assign him, shortly after having directed a historic victory against Iran and conquered 75% of Gaza, and even if he was Netanyahu’s first choice (among the multiple reasons why the Prime Minister never liked Halevi was that Benny Gantz had chosen him).

The positions at stake are generally not those in which the Minister of Defense weighs. Usually, it weighs more on high-end meetings, but these are under this level, and whoever is in Katz position, it is generally just signs.

Above all, the reason is that these officers are generally too far in the military food chain for a Defense Minister to have learned to know one of them or their competitors significantly.

On the other hand, the head of TSAhal does his job to know the colonels and superiors, as well as the Lieutenant-Colonels and above.

When Katz blocked Halevi’s appointments, it was a question of forcing Halevi to publish the report of the failure of Ti-Fix of October 7 and to force him to resign.

But the report has been released since February.

Katz did not ask for any significant new resignation after the announcement, with the exception of Halevi, of the spokesperson for the IDF, Daniel Hagari, and the head of the South IDF command at the time, Yaron Finkelman – who all resigned voluntarily.

All the officers that Zamir wishes to promote has been the key to Israeli victories against Hamas and others since October 7.

They are precisely the kind of officers hardened by the battle that we would expect to find in leading positions.

This is not the first time that a Defense Minister has come up against an FDI chief of staff for appointments. When Ehud Barak clashed with Gabi Ashkenazi as Minister of Defense against the FDI staff chief for public credit to be “Mr. Security “of Israel, he blocked some appointments.

And again, Katz used this process to oust Halevi, but Halevi hung on October 7 above him.
Regarding Katz’s first assertion that Zamir had not consulted with him, he later appeared that the leader of the FDI had tried to meet Katz about the question but was on Pierre.