Israel opposition leader urges Netanyahu to resign over 7 October failures

Israeli opposition leader, Yair Lapid, Monday called on Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to step down, following the resignation of the Military Intelligence Chief over failures to predict the 7 October Hamas attack, Anadolu Agency reports.

Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, the head of the Israeli army’s Military Intelligence Directorate, resigned early Monday over his failure to predict the Hamas attack.

”The resignation of the Military Intelligence Chief is justified and honourable. It would have been appropriate for Prime Minister Netanyahu to do the same,” Lapid wrote on X.

A poll showed on Sunday that two-thirds of Israelis do not believe Netanyahu’s claim that their country is close to achieving an imminent victory in its ongoing war in Gaza for over six months, according to Israeli Channel 13.

The poll also found that 63 per cent of respondents support  holding early elections, while 33 per cent prefer holding the vote as scheduled in October 2026.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since the 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 77,00 others injured amid mass destructions 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.

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