Defense Minister Israel Katz on Monday announced that he and IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir had reached a partial deal in their dispute over a large range of IDF appointments.
Dozens of appointments at the middle management level and some at senior-to-middle management within the IDF will now go through, including officials across the army, air force, and other divisions, mostly at the rank of colonel (brigade commanders of around 1,000 soldiers) and lieutenant-colonel (battalion commanders of around 250 soldiers.)
There are also a small number of appointments being approved at the brigadier-general level.
Zamir views the meeting and deal between the two as moving the dispute in a positive direction.
Despite Zamir winning in respect to those appointments, Katz has said he will hold his ground on freezing and potentially intervening in several appointments at the General Staff level until his third-round probe of two prior IDF probes into the October 7 disaster is complete.
Katz probe on October 7
On November 24, Katz initiated his own new probe into the two previous rounds of IDF probes about October 7, to be led by Defense Ministry Comptroller Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yair Volansky.
Zamir counterattacked, publicly and furiously claiming that Katz was trying to politicize the army and drag it into endless rounds of recrimination about October 7 in order to distract from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s and the rest of the political echelon’s responsibility for the failure.
Katz shot back, claiming that Zamir had been too soft on some IDF officers serving on October 7 and had not gotten to the bottom of certain failures, even after the second IDF probe.
It appeared that Katz wanted to dial down the hostility between the parties, given Zamir’s general popularity, though he also may have made some compromises, since the IDF chief has appointed new task forces to delve further into aspects of the IDF probes, which were incomplete.
Netanyahu also met with the two sides on November 25, but it has been unclear how much he was pressing for a resolution, given that no compromise was announced at the time.
Some major open questions relate to who will succeed Israeli Air Force Chief Maj.-Gen. Tomer Bar and Navy Chief V.-Adm. David Saar Salama.
Given that Bar refused to extend Zamir’s service beyond April 2026, the latter has tried, for some time, to get Bar’s deputy, Brig.-Gen. Omer Tishler, to be appointed to succeed Bar, so that the two men can spend months conducting the most effective possible transition.
Katz has blocked the promotion. This might be to encourage Zamir to make decisions about October 7 consequences for commanders, including for Tishler, who has not been fired, and so should be cleared now to replace the air force chief.
Alternatively, Katz may also have been holding up Tishler’s promotion to force Zamir into compromises on other appointments, such as replacing Maj.-Gen. Hidai Zilberman, who has left his post as defense attaché in Washington.
Zilberman has already moved on to become the head of the IDF Planning Directorate, starting a transition process with IDF Maj.-Gen. Eyal Harel. Zilberman is due to take sole control of the position on December 21.
Zamir wants R.-Adm. Tal Politis to take up the US defense attaché post. Politis has served as deputy head of the navy and the commander of Shayetet 13, Israel's equivalent of the Navy SEALs.
Katz has not publicized anything specific he has against Politis, but wants his military secretary, Brig.-Gen. Guy Markizano to take the post.
Zamir opposes Markizano for the job, and anonymous military sources have even leaked material to the media that takes shots at Markizano’s reputation.
According to the defense minister, the remaining dispute could be resolved in the coming days – though originally he said there would be no resolution before the end of December.