Officials within the Shin Bet security agency have threatened to resign if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s choice to head the agency, Maj. Gen. David Zini, is given the role, according to reports Sunday.

In closed conversations over the weekend, Shin Bet field coordinators responsible for the Jerusalem and West Bank areas described Zini’s nomination as politically motivated, the Kan public broadcaster reported.

They were said to have expressed concern that his “messianic” views conflict with the agency’s core values and would damage its nonpartisan character.

As of Sunday evening, no resignation letters had been formally submitted.

The Shin Bet declined to comment on the matter, but emphasized that it is a national institution operating solely to protect the security of Israeli citizens, according to Kan.

Separately, leaked recordings of a recent conversation between Zini and residents of the Gaza border communities were aired by Israel’s Channel 12 on Sunday.

The focus of the meeting was the IDF’s investigation into the failures surrounding the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

In the recordings, Zini lamented the “tremendous tension” between the war aims of destroying Hamas and recovering the hostages held by the Palestinian terror group.

“We haven’t yet completed or fulfilled the primary goal of the war: to ensure that no threat is posed to the residents of Israel from the Gaza Strip,” said Zini in the leaked audio. “How to accomplish that is a big question.”

Continuing, Zini told the residents of the border communities that the largest issue was “to destroy Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and every other terrorist entity.”

“That’s the most important part — and that’s what we’re working on,” he said, before referencing the biblical story of Ishmael and Isaac, saying that the theme of “evil Muslims against good Jews” has existed “since Ishmael was born — and [continued] indefinitely.”

Zini spoke about “the tremendous tension” between the objectives of destroying Hamas and recovering the 58 remaining hostages, dozens of whom are already dead.

He said that the two goals of “doing everything quickly and bringing everyone back don’t necessarily go hand in hand.”

“We’re doing both,” he stressed. ‘But some elements compete for resources, for operational methods, and we’ve been living in that tension for a year and a half.”

He told the Gaza border residents, many of whom were survivors of the deadly Hamas-led attacks on their communities, that it was “obvious” to anyone who understood the situation that “the major efforts we’re making to bring back all the hostages as quickly as possible are delaying the achievement of the second objective.”

His remarks signaled a major departure from the outlook of his predecessor, outgoing Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, Channel 12 noted, positing that it indicated a shift in how Netanyahu envisions the Shin Bet’s role in the ongoing war and his broader defense strategy.

In additional comments reported on by Channel 13, Zini told the residents of the hard-hit communities that it was their responsibility to prevent another cross-border attack from occurring in the future.

“It is your responsibility, as those who live here, to ensure that something like this does not happen again,” he said, according to the news outlet. “You are the ones who need to be vigilant; that’s your job.”

The comments were said to have drawn outrage from those present, who accused Zini of failing to understand the IDF’s responsibilities and its role in protecting the border.

The attendees walked away from the meeting feeling that Zini was indifferent to what they had experienced and was insensitive to their pain, they told Channel 13.

In additional recordings published by Channel 12, Zini explained to the residents that the threat posed by Hamas “isn’t a threat that developed in a single day; it was built up over years.”

As such, he said reaching a reality in which there is no threat from across the border “is a task for several more years.”

Over the course of his conversation with the Gaza border residents, Zini was said to have been candid about the military’s limitations and its need for more soldiers.

“There isn’t enough force deployment across all areas of combat. There just isn’t,” he is quoted by Channel 13 as having said. “The IDF doesn’t have it. Israel doesn’t have the capabilities — no matter how you try to spin it.”

“Even if you draft all the reservists at once and deploy them in a line along the entire border — it wouldn’t be enough,” he said.

Asked about the efforts to recruit ultra-Orthodox men to the IDF, which he has been overseeing, Zini insisted that “even with the Haredim,” the military would still lack manpower.

“I’m doing a lot to recruit Haredim and I spend many hours on it, but that’s not where the state’s resources are,” he said.

Zini, a father of 11, currently serves as head of the IDF Training Command and General Staff Corps. He has also been responsible for advancing the draft of Haredi soldiers to the military.

Bar will step down from his position as the head of the Shin Bet on June 15 after Netanyahu moved to fire him from the role in a bitter dispute that ended up in the High Court.

The Shin Bet chief was dismissed by cabinet vote on March 21 based on Netanyahu’s assertion that he had lost confidence in Bar’s ability to do the job in the wake of the October 7 onslaught.

Government watchdog groups petitioned the High Court against the controversial decision, alleging that Bar was dismissed due to his defiance of the prime minister on several key issues, not for professional considerations.

Although Bar has since said he will step down from the agency regardless of the ruling, the High Court ruled last Wednesday that Netanyahu had been in a conflict of interest by firing him, due to the Shin Bet’s role in ongoing criminal investigations into Netanyahu’s close aides.