2nd Israel army commander resigns amid Gaza war

The chief of the Israeli army’s Central Command plans to resign in August, in the second such resignation by military commanders on Monday, according to Israeli media.

Major-General Yehuda Fox informed Army Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi, of his intention to step down in August after a 3-year tenure as the General in charge of the West Bank region, the Israeli public broadcaster, KAN, reported.

KAN, however, did not specify the reason behind Fox’s planned resignation, which was announced hours after Major-General Aharon Haliva, head of the Israeli army’s Military Intelligence Directorate, resigned over his failure to predict the Hamas attack.

Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said Fox’s resignation was not related to the failure to predict the Hamas attack.

The newspaper said Fox is a possible candidate to assume higher posts in the army as investigations into the Hamas attack are likely to result in the ousting of some top generals.

The resignations came as Israel continued its brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip following a cross-border Hamas attack on 7 October last year, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

At least 34,151 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and 77,000 others injured amid mass destruction and severe shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85 per cent of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60 per cent of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which, in January, issued an interim ruling that ordered it to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

READ: Israel opposition leader urges Netanyahu to resign over 7 October failures