Israel’s new army chief vowed on Monday to keep the armed forces free from politics, days after his predecessor spoke out against planned changes to military operations in the occupied West Bank.
Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi was sworn in as the army’s chief of staff at a ceremony in Jerusalem. He is the first settler from the West Bank to serve as a military chief.
He succeeds Aviv Kohavi, who over the weekend spoke out in a series of interviews against the division of military authority, particularly in the occupied West Bank. Kohavi concluded a four-year term.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to hand over control of the military body that oversees civil affairs policy in the West Bank to his finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich. The country’s new national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has been promised command of the paramilitary Border Police, whose troops operate in the West Bank under military authority.
Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, middle, Israel’s new army chief, vowed to keep the country’s military free of politics. Halevi assumed the new position from him in a ceremony in Jerusalem.
(AP Photo/ Maya Alleruzzo, Pool)
Both Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are ultranationalist leaders of the West Bank settler movement.
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In an interview with Kan public broadcaster, Kohavi said that “there is no way that in a given area there are two commanders with two different instructions, one for the Border Police and one for the army.” He called such a situation “unprofessional and unethical.”
He also said that separating the Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration in the West Bank from the army’s chain of command “could cause harm” to both Israelis and Palestinians. He told Kan that appointments to the Civil Administration should be made by the chief of staff, rather than politicians, and “without external considerations, and certainly without political considerations.”
Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Middle East war. The Palestinians seek all three territories for a future independent state.
Some 500,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements that are considered illegal by most of the international community. The Civil Administration is responsible for policies that affect both the settlements and the more than 2.5 million Palestinians living in the territory.
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Halevi made brief reference to the controversy, saying in his inaugural address that he would “keep the army unitary, earnest, moral and professional, devoid of all considerations other than security.”
