Major General Avi Zamir, Head of IDF Human Resources Branch, said in a weekend interview that in his opinion. “the IDF should not [be the organization to] carry out the assignment of evacuating communities, but if the IDF is so instructed, it will carry out the mission.”
In a Channel 2 interview, Zamir also spoke out against the phenomenon of refusal of orders. “It is unacceptable that within a Hesder yeshiva, there is political discourse against the army,” he said. This was an oblique reference to the Defense Ministry's statement that the IDF would remove Har Bracha Hesder Yeshiva from the special arrangement ('hesder') which allows students at certain yeshivas to alternate periods of Torah study with their military service.
Maj-Gen Zamir said that enlistment to the IDF is “a national challenge of the highest order.” He spoke of the lack of unity in Israeli society and said that a large bloc of the public is not shouldering its share of the effort. The present lack of unity “damages the social cohesion and the military service,” he said.
Maj-Gen Zamir condemned the phenomenon of young women's evasion of enlistment, through falsely presenting themselves as religiously observant. He noted that the Human Resources Branch hired private investigators to catch young women who had lied about their religion, and to bring them back into the military. “Girls who lie and state that they are religious make cynical use of the law,” he said.