If anyone had said on October 8 that only one of the major top Israeli officials responsible for October 7 would have resigned seven months later and that no larger state inquiry would have even begun, he would have been dismissed as delusional.

On October 8, it seemed that the nation had so completely lost faith in its leadership that all would be gone within months.

There was an early shift when all of the officials, including non-political ones like IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi indicated that they would resign, but only after wrapping up the invasion, estimated to be sometime in January.

However, in January, when the IDF gained full operational control of northern Gaza, and by February, when it had full operational control of central and southern Gaza (minus Rafah), top officials shifted their tone to talk of getting the hostages back first and restoring calm in the North.

They were no longer given deadlines.

By mid-spring though, Halevi said that he would publish an IDF probe of October 7 by mid-June, signaling they may resign then.

A change in attitude and approach

Last month, IDF intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Aharon Haliva became the first top official from October 7 to resign, and if there was an expectation that this would start a wave, it did not.

It seems that Haliva was pushed to resign “earlier” than others for misjudging Iran’s massive aerial retaliation on April 13 after the IDF assassinated IRGC official Mohammed Reza Zahedi and several other officers on April 1.

Only with this additional failure, along with a criticized leaked statement about what Iran might do, on October 7, was he forced out.

Halevi now seems to have no concrete end date and has appointed half a dozen new major-generals to the high command, including Haliva’s replacement, Brig.-Gen. Shlomo Binder.

Explaining his right to replace the high command despite his own responsibility for October 7, Halevi said that the IDF cannot stay frozen for seven months.

This answer, though, suggests he’s stayed on for a long time past when the war was supposed to end, let alone past October 7.

There have been no signs at all of a timeline for Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Chief Ronen Bar to resign, though he also seemed to indicate soon after October 7 that he would.

Unlike the IDF, which has  now set mid-October for publishing its probe of its failures, The Jerusalem Post has learned from the Shin Bet that its report will probably come out at a later date.

Moreover, if many thought that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant might resign on October 7 based on a mixed statement he made about taking responsibility several months ago, now he has said he has no intention of stepping down.

Rather, he will wait for a state inquiry to reprove him and see whether he can respond to those related questions about his responsibility for October 7. Signs indicate that he will argue that he was not given sufficient intelligence from the IDF to know how dire things were on the 7th. He may also blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul campaign, which he opposed, for weakening the IDF in the eyes of all of Israel’s adversaries, including Hamas.

This carries things full circle back to Netanyahu.

His decision not to take responsibility, to explicitly rule out resigning, and to push a constant campaign of stories to blame IDF intelligence for the October 7 failure was likely a turning point for all of the other key officials.

Perhaps Halevi and Bar would have resigned earlier, but justify staying on to prevent Netanyahu from politicizing the defense establishment to save his political skin.

They also believe that with fewer independent defense chiefs, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich could gain greater control over national security policy – something they dread.

Netanyahu has not called directly for the top defense officials to resign (though some of his proxies have), probably to avoid the possibility of a counterattack against him to resign.

As a politician, Gallant was already less likely to resign than Halevi and Bar, and once it became clear that Netanyahu was not going to quit willingly, Gallant wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

Ultimately, Halevi and Bar are both still expected to resign. But they may delay those moves for months if they think they can survive until new elections put in place a different prime minister, such as Benny Gantz.

At that point, they would have less fear of who Gantz might appoint to replace them, especially Halevi, appointed by Gantz as outgoing defense minister just before Netanyahu returned to power.

Where Gallant would be in this scenario is not clear.

The last factor impacting all of the possible resignations is a potential state inquiry. But that is the last factor because it appears that Netanyahu will either not permit such a commission, or that he would only allow it to be established in a way that would insulate him from political harm.

In the one moment in January, when Halevi tried to add a mini-state inquiry aspect to the IDF’s probe, Netanyahu sent the IDF chief a tidal wave of critics, until the idea was killed and the IDF probe was kept focused only on the military.

This means that a state inquiry might only be established by a future prime minister, at which point all of the relevant resignations may have taken place simply as a function of the length of time that will have elapsed.

Whether such a state inquiry will restore a culture of personal responsibility among Israeli officials or will be too little too late to have a real impact is anyone’s guess.