TEL AVIV: The head of Israel’s military intelligence directorate resigned on Monday over the failures surrounding Hamas’ unprecedented Oct. 7 attack, the military said, becoming the first senior figure to step down over his role in the deadliest assault in Israel’s history.
Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva’s resignation sets the stage for what’s expected to be more fallout from Israel’s top security brass over Hamas’ attack, when militants blasted through Israel’s border defenses, rampaged through Israeli communities unchallenged for hours and killed 1,200 people, most civilians, while taking roughly 250 hostages into Gaza. That attack set off the war against Hamas in Gaza, now in its seventh month.
The military said in a statement that Haliva had asked to end his service “following his leadership responsibility.” Shortly after the war, Haliva had publicly said that he shouldered blame for not preventing the assault at the head of the military department responsible for providing the government and the military with intelligence warnings and daily alerts.
The military said in the statement that the military chief of staff accepted Haliva’s request to resign and thanked him for his service.
Haliva, as well as other military and security leaders, were widely expected to resign in response to the glaring failures that led up to Oct. 7 and those that made it such a devastating attack.
But the timing of the resignations is unclear, because Israel is still fighting Hamas in Gaza and battling the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in the north. Tensions with Iran are also at a high following attacks between the two enemies.
While Haliva and others have accepted blame for failing to stop the attack, others have stopped short, most notably Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said he will answer tough questions about his role but has not outright acknowledged any responsibility for allowing the attack to unfold.
Israeli military intelligence chief resigns over failure to prevent Oct. 7 attack
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Israeli military intelligence chief resigns over failure to prevent Oct. 7 attack
- Aharon Haliva becomes the first senior Israeli figure to step down over Hamas’ attack
Lebanon receives thousands of expatriates amid Israeli aggression
- Country faces realities while getting ready to welcome the new year
BEIRUT: Fadi Al-Hassan, director-general of Lebanon’s civil aviation authority, said on Monday that “Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport welcomed 11,700 visitors in one day,” and that “the total number of arrivals to date in December has reached about 220,000.”
Al-Hassan described the figures as “an important achievement compared with the previous years.”
Lebanon is trying to recover from an expanded, destructive Israeli war that started last October against Hezbollah and ended about a month ago under a conditional agreement that provides for the Lebanese army’s deployment in southern Lebanon.
Meanwhile, the Israeli forces, which must completely withdraw from the areas they invaded in the south within a period of 60 days pursuant to the agreement, continue to detonate and bulldoze houses, evacuating only a few areas.
The Israeli army carried out a huge demolition operation in Taybeh, Marjayoun, after bulldozing houses in Taybeh, Mays Al-Jabal, Khiam, Kfarkila and Chamaa.
Most of the arrivals in Lebanon are expatriates who came to spend the holidays with their families, as well as Syrians using Beirut’s airport to return to Syria.
Lebanon is preparing to welcome the new year, while living two separate realities.
In Beirut’s southern suburbs, littered with the rubble of flattened buildings, dozens of “for sale” signs are displayed on the balconies of several buildings that survived the war.
Nisrine, who came back from Germany to check on her mother in Burj Al-Barajneh, told Arab News: “What we saw on the screen is different than reality. The destruction here is scary. The suburb is gloomy and no longer looks like itself.
“Nights are horrific,” she added. “People are tired and worried, the cost of rebuilding what was destroyed is huge, and non-Hezbollah partisans complain of the absence of financial aid to help fix the broken windows at least.”
On the other hand, the areas not affected by war face increased road traffic, with holiday decorations taking over the streets, restaurants and shops.
Therese, who runs a pub with her children in Badaro, hoped “that the situation would get better in the coming new year, and that the 2024 war would be the country’s last.”
She said that “the whole country was affected by what happened in the southern suburbs, the south, and Bekaa. People want to go on with their lives, and we try to be a beacon of hope for them to reduce the weight of the days they went through.”
Security agencies are taking precautions, covering all expected tourist spots in Lebanon.
Minister of Interior Bassam Malawi, and the director-general of the internal security forces, Maj. Gen. Imad Othman, will personally supervise the launch of security patrols, with the event to be broadcast live on TV channels.
Civil aviation’s Al-Hassan said that “Emirati, French, and German airlines, as well as other companies that have suspended flights to Lebanon during the war, could possibly resume their flight schedule to Lebanon in the next 10 days,” adding that “other companies have already resumed their activity with a limited number of flights to Lebanon.”
He expected “the organization of flights to be further improved next month.”
In other news, a parliamentary session is expected to take place on Jan. 9 to elect a president — a position that has been vacant for 26 months due to political disputes between Hezbollah and its allies on one hand, and its opponents on the other, as to the president’s identity.
With nine days remaining until the session, the identity of the candidate with the highest chances of winning is still unknown. It is also unclear whether the quorum will be met, or whether any political party would be willing to compromise.
Despite Hezbollah’s struggle with the rubble removal, compensation and reconstruction file, the party considered, according to its head of Arab and International Relations, Ammar Moussawi, that “some fools and idiots think that the resistance was defeated and written off.”
He added: “We tell them that as long as our hearts are beating, the resistance will remain. Dreaming of a Lebanon without the resistance is wishful thinking.”
Hezbollah parliament MP Hassan Fadlallah said that “the resistance’s firmness, and the political effort led by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, in full coordination with Hezbollah’s leadership, are what led to the ceasefire agreement, which in turn forced the enemy to withdraw within a 60-day period from the border area.”
He added that “the agreement didn’t allow the enemy to carry out any violations and hostilities on Lebanese territory and in the southern area and border villages.”
Fadlallah believed that “besides the internal political divisions and conflicts, confronting the Israeli hostilities against our country should be part of a responsible national stance, where every party assumes its responsibilities, be it the state, the official authorities or the political forces.”
He continued: “This cause must concern all the Lebanese. The south is part of our country, and everyone should be involved in defending and protecting the country’s sovereignty. This requires a national stance.”
He emphasized that “the only way to confront this enemy is through the resistance’s weapons and the people-army-resistance equation.”
On the Israeli side, Israel’s Minister of Defense Israel Katz said that “every dollar denied to Hezbollah is a step closer toward weakening this organization. We will block Hezbollah’s attempts to recover.”
Katz said: “The long arm of Israel will act in every way to ensure the safety of our citizens, and we are working on all fronts to dry up Hezbollah’s sources of funding as it attempts to rebuild its capabilities.”
Palestinian Authority says five more Gazans die in Israeli detention
RAMALLAH: The Palestinian Authority’s ministry for detainees and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club announced on Monday that they had received reports of the deaths of five Gazans in Israeli detention.
Amani Sarahna, a spokesperson for the Prisoners’ Club, confirmed to AFP that two of the five died on Sunday, while the remaining three died earlier.
The club said the five prisoners were arrested during the Israel-Hamas war, some of them while fleeing from the north of the Gaza Strip southwards.
According to the two organizations, 54 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli prisons since the start of the war in Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Thirty-five of the dead have been from the Gaza Strip, with the rest from the occupied West Bank.
The detainees ministry is an arm of the Palestinian Authority responsible for the welfare of Palestinians in Israeli jails and their families.
The two organizations named four of the dead prisoners as Mohammad Rashid Okka, 44, Samir Mahmoud Al-Kahlout, 52, Zuhair Omar Al-Sharif, 58, and Mohammad Anwar Labad, 57.
An additional prisoner, Ashraf Mohammad Abu Warda, 51, died in Israel’s Soroka Hospital on Sunday, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said.
They did not provide details of how the prisoners died.
In a joint statement, the two organizations accused Israel of “liquidation operations against prisoners and detainees.”
They said the number of prisoners killed in Israeli jails was at a historic high, calling it “the most bloody phase.” According to the statement, 291 Palestinian prisoners have died in custody since 1967, when Israel began occupying the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Currently, more than 10,000 Palestinians are being held in Israeli jails, including 89 women, at least 345 children and 3,428 administrative detainees who are held without trial.
The Israel Prisons Service did not immediately respond to an AFP request for confirmation of the deaths.
For the first time, Syrians ‘not afraid’ to talk politics
- For over 50 years, the Assads maintained their vice grip on society, in large part through the countless informants that walked among the population
DAMASCUS: For decades, any Syrian daring to broach political topics got used to speaking in hushed tones and with a watchful eye trained for a listener among the crowd.
“There were spies everywhere,” Mohannad Al-Katee said in Al-Rawda cafe in Damascus, adding almost in disbelief: “It’s the first time that I sit in a cafe and I can talk about politics.
“It was a dream for Syrians,” said Katee, 42, a researcher in political and social history.
Until now, he like thousands of others had grown accustomed to watching for the proverbial flies on the walls of Damascus’s renowned cafes.
Today, those same cafes are alive and buzzing with the voices of patrons speaking freely about their country for the first time.
Such discussions “were banned under the previous regime, then there was a relative opening during the Damascus Spring,” Katee said.
He was referring to the year 2000, when Bashar Assad took over from his late father Hafez and slightly loosened the reins on political life in Syria.
Initially, the young Assad had opened up an unprecedented space, allowing for political salons to flourish alongside calls for reform in a country that had long grown accustomed to fear and silence.
“But it didn’t last,” said Katee.
A few months after his succession, Assad rolled back those gains, putting an end to the short-lived “Damascus Spring.”
In the subsequent years, according to Katee, informants were ubiquitous, from “the hookah waiter to the man at the till, it could have been anyone.”
“Political life consisted of secret meetings,” he said. “We were always taught that the walls have ears.”
Today, “Syrians can never go back to obscurantism and dictatorship, to accepting single-party rule,” he said.
A little further on, in the Havana cafe once known as a meeting point for intellectuals and activists in a distant past, Fuad Obeid is chatting with a friend.
Himself a former owner of a cafe he had to shut down, the 64-year-old said: “The intelligence services spent their time at my place. They drank for free as though they owned the place.”
For over 50 years, the Assads maintained their vice grip on society, in large part through the countless informants that walked among the population.
On Saturday, Syria’s new intelligence chief, Anas Khattab, announced that the service’s various branches would be dissolved.
Obeid said: “I used to keep a low profile so they wouldn’t know I was the owner. I told customers not to talk politics for fear of reprisals.”
Now, he noted, in Havana cafe as in others, the difference is like “night and day.”
Back in Al-Rawda, discussions are in full swing over hookahs and games of backgammon.
The owner Ahmad Kozorosh still can’t believe his eyes, having himself witnessed numerous arrests in his own cafe over the years.
“I am now seeing almost exclusively new faces,” he said. “People who had been sentenced to death, imprisoned.”
To celebrate the new era, he is holding weekly symposiums in the cafe, and will even launch a new political party to be named after it.
Real estate agent Nesrine Shouban, 42, had spent three years in prison for carrying US dollars, a punishable offense in Assad’s Syria.
Alongside thousands of others who found freedom when the doors of prisons were flung open, she was released on December 8 from the notorious Adra prison.
“They had dangled in front of us the possibility of an amnesty” from Assad’s administration, she said. “Thankfully, the amnesty came from God.”
“At cafes, we didn’t dare say anything. We were even afraid that our phones were bugged,” she said.
Now, for the first time, she said she felt “truly free.”
Despite concerns over the extremist background of Syria’s new rulers, a breath of freedom has washed over the country for the first time, with public demonstrations being organized — an unthinkable prospect just one month earlier.
“We are not afraid anymore,” said Shouban. “If Jolani makes mistakes, we will denounce them,” she added, referring to Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa, known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammad Al-Jolani.
“In all cases, it can’t be worse than Bashar Assad.”
Monitor says 31 Kurdish, Turkish-backed fighters killed in Syria
- The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that seven pro-Turkish fighters were killed in clashes Monday in the northeastern Manbij region
BEIRUT: A Syria war monitor said 31 combatants had been killed since Sunday in ongoing battles between Turkiye-backed groups and Kurdish-led forces.
Swathes of northern Syria are controlled by a Kurdish-led administration whose de facto army, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), spearheaded the fight that helped defeat the Daesh group in the country in 2019 with US backing.
Turkiye accuses the main component of the SDF, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), of being affiliated with the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which both Washington and Ankara consider a terrorist group.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that seven pro-Turkish fighters were killed in clashes Monday in the northeastern Manbij region, in Aleppo province.
SDF fighters had infiltrated the city of the same name after it was retaken by Ankara-backed groups earlier this month, the monitor said.
Six other pro-Turkish fighters and three members of the SDF were killed the day before in the same part of Aleppo province, it said.
The SDF said Monday that it had carried out attacks elsewhere in the province that destroyed “two radars, a jamming system and a tank of the Turkish occupation” near a strategic bridge over the Euphrates.
According to the Observatory, 13 members of the pro-Turkiye factions and two members of the SDF “were killed as a result of flaring battles” near the bridge and the Tishreen Dam.
The Britain-based Observatory said clashes in the area had been going on for around three weeks “as both sides seek to advance.”
Turkiye has staged multiple operations in SDF areas since 2016, and Ankara-backed groups have captured several Kurdish-held towns in northern Syria in recent weeks.
The fighting has continued since rebels led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) ousted longtime ruler Bashar Assad from power on December 8.
New Syrian leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa, whose HTS group has long had ties with Turkiye, told Al Arabiya TV on Sunday that the Kurdish-led forces should be integrated into the national army.
“Weapons must be in the hands of the state alone. Whoever is armed and qualified to join the defense ministry, we will welcome them,” he said.
“Under these terms and conditions, we will open a negotiations dialogue with the SDF... to perhaps find an appropriate solution.”
WHO demands Israel release Gaza hospital director
- Assault on Kamal Adwan in Beit Lahia left northern Gaza’s last major health facility out of service and emptied of patients
- Al-Ahli Hospital and Al-Wafa Rehabilitation Hospital in Gaza City also faced Israeli attacks and both are damaged
GENEVA: The WHO chief called Monday for the immediate release of Hossam Abu Safiyeh, director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, who is being held by Israel’s military following a major raid on the facility.
The Friday-Saturday assault on Kamal Adwan in Beit Lahia left northern Gaza’s last major health facility out of service and emptied of patients, the World Health Organization said.
“Hospitals in Gaza have once again become battlegrounds and the health system is under severe threat,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X.
“Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza is out of service following the raid, forced patient and staff evacuation and the detention of its director. His whereabouts are unknown. We call for his immediate release.”
Israel’s military said Sunday that its forces had killed approximately 20 Palestinian militants and apprehended “240 terrorists” in the raid, calling it one of its “largest operations” conducted in the territory.
The military also said had detained Abu Safiyeh, suspecting him of being a Hamas militant. When asked if he had been transferred to Israeli territory for further questioning, the military did not offer an immediate comment.
Tedros said the patients in critical condition at Kamal Adwan had been moved to the Indonesian Hospital, “which is itself out of function.”
“Amid ongoing chaos in northern Gaza, WHO and partners today delivered basic medical and hygiene supplies, food and water to Indonesian Hospital and transferred 10 critical patients to Al-Shifa Hospital,” he said.
“We urge Israel to ensure their health care needs and rights are upheld.”
He said seven patients along with 15 caregivers and health workers remained at the “severely damaged” Indonesian Hospital, “which has no ability to provide care.”
“Al-Ahli Hospital and Al-Wafa Rehabilitation Hospital in Gaza City also faced attacks today and both are damaged,” Tedros added.
“We repeat: stop attacks on hospitals. People in Gaza need access to health care. Humanitarians need access to provide health aid.”
Since October 6 this year, Israeli operations in Gaza have focused on the north, with officials saying their land and air offensive aims to prevent Hamas from regrouping.
