Israel needs ‘a Nakba every now and then’ and prefers Hamas rule, says ex-intelligence chief

Palestinians need to face a Nakba “every now and then” and the spiralling death toll in Gaza is “necessary”, said former Israeli intelligence chief Maj Gen Aharon Haliva, in audio recordings broadcast on Ulpan Shishi, a TV programme which aired on Israel’s Channel 12, on Friday.

“The fact that there are already 50,000 dead in Gaza is necessary and required for future generations,” Haliva stated, severely undercounting the true toll of Israel’s ongoing genocidal assault. According to the health ministry in Gaza, the number of Palestinians killed is nearing 62,000 the majority of them women and children.

Haliva framed the mass killing in Gaza as a calculated and justified punishment. “For each one [killed] on 7 October, 50 Palestinians have to die,” he insisted, echoing what genocide experts have described as a textbook example of collective punishment and genocidal logic.

“There’s no choice, they need a Nakba every now and then to feel the consequences,” he continued, referencing the 1948 mass expulsion of Palestinians by Zionist militias to make way for the creation of a Jewish-supremacist state in historic Palestine. The Nakba is widely recognised by historians as a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

The death and destruction unleashed on Gaza since October 2023 is widely seen by human rights observers as a campaign to erase Palestinian life in the enclave and make it permanently unliveable, which is a hallmark of genocidal intent under international law.

Israel’s bombing has displaced Gaza’s 2.3 million residents multiple times, flattened entire neighbourhoods and deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, water networks, schools and bakeries.

Haliva also described Gaza as a “disturbed neighbourhood” and said his comments were not out of revenge but meant as “a message for future generations.”

Channel 12 did not specify when the recordings were made, but Haliva’s reference to 50,000 dead may suggest they may have been recorded around March 2024, when that figure was reached. The death toll has since risen dramatically, with some estimation predicting the death toll to be in the hundreds of thousands.

In a separate segment of the recordings, Haliva revealed Israel’s long-term political strategy for the illegally occupied West Bank. He said that Israel was intent on creating a politically hostile environment in the occupied West Bank so that groups like Hamas could assume power and the international community would refuse to engage with them, thereby killing off the idea of a two-state solution.

Haliva explained that a plan was devised after Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza to dismantle Hamas, but Israeli officials had no intention of “implementing it”.

“Listen, you don’t understand that there are much deeper things here. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the heart of the matter, because Hamas is good for Israel – that’s [Finance Minster Bezalel] Smotrich’s argument,” Haliva said, saying that the minister wants to dismantle the Palestinian Authority (PA) and let Hamas take control in the West Bank, as it did in Gaza

“Why? Because if the entire Palestinian arena is destabilised and crazy, it is impossible to negotiate with,” Haliva said. “Then there will be no agreement [on a Palestinian state].”