Yaakov Peri, who led the agency between 1988 and 1994, told Army Radio on Sunday that Ronen Bar has made it clear to staff that he will step down.
During the surprise attack, which bucked years of assessments by defense officials and political leaders, Hamas invaded southern Israel with some 3,000 forces from the Gaza Strip. It took the military several hours to mount an effective response.
“We must make sure there is a balance” in which both the political leadership and the defense establishment “pay the price,” he said. “Everyone must take responsibility for the failure.”
An unnamed source in the Shin Bet countered Peri’s claims on Army Radio, saying that the only thing Bar has said about the situation was during the first week of the war when he sent a missive to staff accepting overall responsibility for the situation.
On October 15, Bar acknowledged his responsibility for the lack of an early warning for the assault on southern Israel communities.
“Despite a series of actions we carried out, unfortunately on [October 7] we were unable to generate a sufficient warning that would allow the attack to be thwarted,” he wrote at the time to members of the agency.
“As the one who heads the organization, the responsibility for this is mine,” Bar said. “There will be time for investigations. Now we are fighting.”
Aside from Bar, other top officials in charge of Israel’s security have admitted personal responsibility and failure, among them Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, and the head of the Army Military Intelligence Directorate, Maj. Gen Aharon Haliva.
The subject has become a source of tension within the cabinet. While the government has insisted it wants to wait until the end of the war before launching a probe into what went wrong, Halevi drew heavy fire at a recent security cabinet meeting when he announced the IDF will start its own investigation into operational failures. Right-wing ministers assailed the army chief in what was reportedly a dispute loud enough to be heard down the corridor from the closed-door meeting.
That led war cabinet Minister Benny Gantz to warn Netanyahu to choose between national unity and playing politics as he chastised the prime minister for not shutting down the attack on Halevi.
