Gaza Death Toll: Ex-Israeli Intel Chief’s Controversial Claim

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This image made from video provided in December 2023 by Israeli Defense Forces shows Aharon Haliva, then the head of Israel’s military intelligence in Gaza City, Gaza Strip.

Israel Defense Forces/AP

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Israel Defense Forces/AP

The term Nakba – or “catastrophe” – refers to the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the war that accompanied Israel’s creation in 1948.

It is indeed the first time a former senior Israeli military figure has been heard endorsing a high Palestinian death toll in Israel’s nearly two-year-long offensive in Gaza, saying it was “necessary.” The date the remarks were made was not broadcast.

Israeli politicians have previously made incendiary calls about “erasing” Gaza and fighting “human animals” – rhetoric that has as been cited at the International Court of Justice in a case brought by South Africa as evidence Israel is pursuing genocide, which Israel denies.

But this is the first such statement to have been attributed to a figure at Haliva’s level inside the military establishment.

“The remarks by former head of Military intelligence Aharon Haliva are part of a long line of official statements that expose a intentional policy of genocide,” said the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem in a post on X.

Haliva oversaw Israeli military intelligence divisions in the lead-up to the biggest intelligence failure in Israel’s history – the hamas-led surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed nearly 1,200 Israelis according to Israeli government figures. more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza.

He resigned from the military in April 2024, taking obligation for the intelligence failures that allowed the Hamas assault and the kidnapping of more than 250 Israelis, 50 of whom still remain in captivity.

Reflecting on those failures in other remarks aired by Israeli Channel 12, he admitted that Israeli intelligence had long underestimated the threat from Gaza. For years, military assessments concluded that Hamas was deterred from launching a full-scale war – and that the greater danger of attack came from the West Bank, not Gaza.

Those assumptions collapsed on the morning of Oct. 7, when Hamas fighters stormed Israeli communities and military bases and overran them, exposing deep vulnerabilities in Israel’s defenses.

Israeli Channel 12 broadcasted a response by Haliva, in which he confirmed the authenticity of the remarks leaked from a private discussion, which he said he regretted, and said the quotes were taken out of context.