Hamas’s military branch has been “defeated militarily and tactically,” outgoing Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said last week, according to leaked recordings of his remarks aired by Israel’s Channel 12 News on Sunday.

In a meeting on Friday with heads of regional councils in southern Israel to present the military’s internal findings regarding the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacre, Halevi noted however that more work remained to be done.

“Hamas still has capabilities. We must not stop here. We need to continue and harm [it]. A buffer security zone is required and must be held strongly,” he said, emphasizing that “under no circumstances will we [withdraw] communities backwards [from the Gaza border].”

The outgoing military chief was accompanied on Friday’s visit by the head of the IDF’s Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, Home Front Command chief Maj. Gen. Rafi Milo, Gaza Division commander Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram and representatives of the Israeli Air Force and IDF Military Intelligence Directorate.

Among the lessons drawn from the Oct. 7 massacre was that Israel requires a buffer with Gaza “at all times … by air, sea and land,” Halevi told the council heads.

“The manpower here will consist of more tanks and more fighters,” he said, adding that “with regard to the communities, there’s a plan to build bases between the communities and the border fence.”

“I want you to know,” Halevi told the council heads, “that many people who were murdered [on Oct. 7], their last words were, ‘Where’s the IDF?’ I know this, and it is very very difficult for us.”

Southern Commander Finkelman said, “I want to start by telling you my most important message: The Southern Command failed its mission and its role on Oct. 7—I failed, as the commander. The failure is on my shoulders and this is how I choose to end my role and resign from the military … This failure and its cost are etched into me as a commander, etched into me as a person, and I will carry it with me until my last day on this earth.”

He said it had been “very difficult” for the military to understand what was happening on Oct. 7.

Of the broader failings of the IDF, Halevi said that prior to the attack the military had viewed Hamas as a “limited” military force incapable of launching a large-scale surprise attack. The military’s posture towards Gaza had been reliant on intelligence, he said.

In a separate report on Sunday, Channel 12 detailed some of the other failures of the military and intelligence services in the lead-up to the Hamas assault.

For instance, the IDF’s Gaza Division had been sent an email regarding a report that Hamas terrorists had activated Israeli SIM cards in their phones before Oct. 6, but failed to open it, according to the report. The night prior to the attack, more Israeli SIM cards were activated in Gaza, generating another email to the division, which was again not read by anyone.

According to Channel 12, the reason for this was that the the Gaza Division intelligence officer who remained on duty during the holiday did not have sufficient clearance for the information and was therefore unable to access the email.

Then-Military Intelligence Directorate head Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva received a phone call at 3:15 a.m. on Oct. 7 with information about suspicious activity in Gaza, according to the report. He asked if Southern Command was “on it” and went back to sleep after receiving an affirmative answer.

Channel 12 further reported that for the past 15 years, the Military Intelligence Directorate has had no human intelligence sources within Gaza and that the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) had no active intelligence sources in the Strip.

The Israeli military released on Feb. 27 the findings of its internal probes into the failures leading up to and during the Hamas-led cross-border terrorist attacks and the resulting massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“It is wrong to ‘manage’ a conflict with an enemy whose goal is your destruction,” the top-level military investigation states, concluding that Hamas terrorists “took advantage of Israel’s policy of ‘conflict management’ to advance an orderly plan for a broad attack.”

Halevi announced his resignation on Jan. 21, citing his responsibility for the IDF’s failings on Oct. 7, 2023.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Eyal Zamir is slated to become IDF’s 24th chief of staff on Thursday.

Image - Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, head of the IDF’s Southern Command, pictured to the left of IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, in the Rafah area of Gaza, December 2024. Credit: IDF.