Defense Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday said he was keeping military staffing decisions under his close watch, ratcheting up a brewing spat with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir.
“After the events of October 7, there is no longer an army without supervision,” he said, in what his office dubbed a “clarification.”
Katz on Monday clashed with Zamir over a meeting the top general held on senior appointments in the military, and subsequently slapped down the proposed promotions.
“In accordance with the law, I am the one who decides on approving promotions from colonel on up, and the IDF chief is meant to recommend various options,” he said in the statement.
“Therefore, a procedure was established for prior consultation between the defense minister and the chief of staff, a procedure that must be carried out in an orderly manner and in preliminary discussions, as has been done since I assumed the post of defense minister,” Katz said.
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“The attempt to change the procedures we decided on, perhaps on the recommendation of anti-government advisers stirring the pot, and to replace them with an attempt to determine facts on the ground in ad hoc meetings, will not succeed,” he added.
There appears to be no law that names the defense minister as the official in charge of approving senior promotions in the military. There is a “General Staff order”– a top-tier military protocol — from 1992, updated in 2020, stating that for promotions of colonels and above, the IDF chief of staff is the “appointing authority” and the defense minister is the “approving authority.”
The approving authority is defined in the military protocol as the official authorized to approve the promotion of an officer after it has been agreed upon in a staffing discussion.
The order also states that “the appointment of officers in the IDF will take place after holding an appointments discussion. The decision in the appointments discussion will be made by the chairperson of the discussion and will be passed on for approval by the approving authority.”
After Katz’s statement, unnamed senior defense establishment officials quoted by Army Radio rejected Katz’s claim that the IDF chief was pot-stirring and said Zamir acted appropriately.
“The defense minister is trying to politicize the army and IDF officers,” the station reported the officials saying. “No prior defense minister did this so blatantly. IDF appointments need to be made according to the chain of command and the command hierarchy.”
The officials reportedly went on to say that if a commander “knows the defense minister or [the right-leaning] Channel 14 are the ones who appointed him, what is he supposed to think?”
Katz’s stance is “likely to have broad implications for the whole career officer corps,” the officials said. “Appointment of officers by the minister could turn the IDF into a police force.”
The officials also claimed Katz’s attack is motivated by his disagreements with Zamir over ultra-Orthodox enlistment and the planned conquest of Gaza City. It said Zamir does not intend to resign because of those arguments.
On Tuesday, Kan news cited sources in the IDF as saying Zamir had set a meeting with Katz on Monday to go over the list of appointments, but was not let into Katz’s office at the scheduled time, with Katz’s secretary telling Zamir that the minister was busy.
Katz’s office said a meeting had been scheduled with Zamir but the general had later been informed that the defense minister would be unavailable and that the meeting was canceled, Kan said.
Kan also reported Tuesday that Zamir had recently held consultations with several former high-ranking army officers, including ex-chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, former Operations Directorate head Israel Ziv, and ex-IDF spokesman Avi Benayahu, all of whom have been critical of the government.
Blue and White MK and chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Gabi Ashkenazi, leads a committee discussion on the data of ultra-Orthodox recruits to the army, in the Knesset, on December 9, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
The Haaretz daily reported that in his consultations with current and former colleagues, Zamir said he had been “marked” by Netanyahu’s family for expressing opposition to the new Gaza offensive, and that the premier’s associates were interested in firing him.
Zamir replaced former IDF chief Herzi Halevi in March.
A source who participated in Zamir’s consultations was quoted as saying, “The chief of staff understands exactly what’s happening and does not intend to hand over the military to Netanyahu and Katz.”
Responding to the reports, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said Wednesday that Netanyahu should replace Zamir if he does not immediately dismiss his advisers.
“When you see the people closest to the chief of staff, it’s clear why he’s digging his heels in against our plan to occupy Gaza,” Ben Gvir said in a statement, adding that Zamir is surrounded by figures who favor “surrender.”
“If [Zamir] does not immediately announce that he is replacing his far-left political inner circle, I call on the prime minister to replace him immediately with a candidate who strives for victory, not one who, with his advisers, is working to undermine the political leadership,” he continued.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir seen after a visit at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on August 3, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
In a post on X, Benayahu denied the report claiming he was part of a “secret inner circle” consulting Zamir.
“The report is not true. I made this very clear to the reporter who spoke with me. I honestly told him that I met Zamir once in his office in the presence of the IDF spokesperson for a background conversation, and that I spoke with him only twice by phone,” he said.
Benayahu said he believes that the report by Kan “was leaked to a respected diplomatic reporter who is less familiar with matters concerning the chief of staff and his office, and it was apparently intended to ‘pave the way’ for an announcement issued this morning by the defense minister’s office about ‘anti-government advisers (what is that?) advising Zamir.”
The dispute came after the cabinet overnight Thursday-Friday approved a plan to take over Gaza City — an apparently watered-down version of Netanyahu’s stated intent to take over the entire Strip.
The decision has sparked fierce criticism at home and abroad. Zamir reportedly warned the cabinet that expanding the fighting would endanger the remaining 50 hostages in Gaza and deepen the humanitarian crisis there.
Netanyahu has frequently clashed with Israel’s security chiefs throughout the war in Gaza. The premier’s critics have accused him of seeking to offload onto security heads his own responsibility for failing to avert the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza.
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