Draft report accuses Netanyahu, Ya’alon and Gantz of failing to anticipate Hamas tunnel threat, withholding info from cabinet
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and former IDF chief of Staff Benny Gantz are expected to face harsh criticism in an upcoming State Comptroller report over the Israeli leadership’s performance during the war in Gaza in the summer of 2014.
Netanyahu and Ya’alon are accused of not updating the security cabinet in real time of the imminent threat of war with the Hamas in the Gaza Strip and not discussing the grave threat of the terror group’s attack tunnels, according to Hebrew media sources who read the draft report.
The prime minister and the defense minister concealed from the cabinet the fact that the Shin Bet security agency had warned of a potential war with Hamas in early July 2014, Channel 10 reported. The war, which Israel dubbed Operation Protective Edge, began on July 8, 2014.
Members of the security cabinet were only apprised of the Shin Bet warning during the operation, the report said.
In the draft report, State Comptroller Yosef Shapira also slams Gantz for the IDF’s lack of operational readiness and planning vis-a-vis the threats posed by tunnels in the Strip.
Hamas’s tunnels were used to devastating effect during the war on a number of occasions to ambush IDF soldiers.
In February, the comptroller’s office released a statement pointing to severe failures to anticipate the tunnel threat.
“The draft as submitted points to gaps and failures, some severe, in the readiness for the tunnel threat and dealing with them,” the comptroller’s office said.
Shapira’s report is expected to be even harsher than the infamous Winograd Commission, which took the Olmert government to task for its conduct during the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, and which led to the resignation of the then IDF chief Dan Halutz, Channel 2 reported.
Netanyahu and Ya’alon hit back at Shapira on Thursday evening, dismissing the report as “not serious.”
Sources close to the two men said they rejected the claims against them in the draft.
“The operation was conducted with unprecedented transparency vis-a-vis the security cabinet. Over the course of the operation, Netanyahu convened the cabinet dozens of times, more than during any other [military] operation in history,” a source close to Netanyahu said Thursday.
The Israeli military destroyed over 30 Hamas tunnels during the 2014 operation, and recently uncovered two sophisticated tunnels that lead into Israeli territory, including one on Thursday.
Following the 50-day conflict, Israel invested an estimated NIS 1 billion (approximately $250 million) in developing a detection system to locate such tunnels.
The draft report came amid fears of another conflict in the south after several days of exchanges near the border.
A Palestinian woman was killed Thursday when Israeli tank shells hit her home east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the southern city’s Nasser hospital said.
The Israeli fire came in response to a spate of mortar attacks on troops along the Gaza border fence since Tuesday.
Netanyahu called an emergency meeting of the security cabinet for Thursday night to discuss the escalation in violence along Israel’s southern border, while Ya’alon warned Hamas that Israel would not tolerate any attempts to disrupt the lives of its citizens.
“Terrorist elements in the Gaza Strip need to know that if they try to disrupt our lives, they will delivered a severe blow,” he said at a service to mark the end of Holocaust Remembrance Day. “We will not tolerate a return to a routine of shooting and attempts to harm our civilians and soldiers. We will take firm action with an iron fist, as we have in the past few days.”
It appears as though PM Netanyahu gave ground on practically every major issue. He would argue that he had no choice, but I do not believe this is true. The big problem is, who would would both be an improvement and also electable? Some like Feiglin, others Bennet, yet they do not have a chance to win. Netanyahu created this centrist platform, in which he, sits at the head of a large coalition government made up of a cross section of the electorate, specifically for stability. The gambit has worked quite well as no one is poised to unseat The Badger.
Now with the discovery of the new tunnels, Netanyahu can not make a case for tracking all future deliveries of concrete(FAILED) or cancellation of such deliveries, which I think is the only way to prevent a re-occurrence, assuming other sources via Sinai have all but dried up with El Sissi’s efforts to destroy smuggling tunnels, this would be actionable in The UN. Yet this solves nothing. The enemy must be soundly routed, defeated and sent scrambling to parts unknown, well yes, let them go to Europe.
I would ask how many more must die for this ghetto mentality. this is not what Israel is supposed to be. It should, as PM Begin declared, …”use all resources at our disposal….and “…does a people have to defend itself, should it defend itself…” This is not defense. Begin himself forgot his own words and chose a legacy for himself, which he lived to regret; sadly, as a miserable wretch.
Naturally it will be up to The Israeli electorate. Netanyahu and Ya’alon and Ganz are clearly a liability. The only person I trust right now in public view is Nitzana Darshan Leitner and a very few others, some who serve in this government. She truly gets it and does not waste time with formality, has plenty of what it takes to serve well in any capacity in which she otherwise qualifies. Really, come on, it is just a matter of time, stop wasting time.
I am not suggesting she be put up for PM, perhaps one day, but she should serve in some capacity and offer suggestions on who should likewise serve, individuals not tainted as the present dreck appears to be, almost uniformly.
I get it. The tunnels were a deadly surprise in 2014. Netanyahu’s response is to allow the concrete into Gaze to rebuild even more tunnels along with food, water and free electricity for Gaza. Israel continues to have a lunatic government bent on suicide.
the crime is to risk soldiers lives to protect enemy civilians. the policy should be changed to make decisions in favor of saving soldiers lives at the expense of enemy civilians. An entity which targets Jewish civilians should be mercilessly slaughtered and the euros which fund them should be punished by deriving the gazans out as boat people to europe there they can kill their euro funders instead of Jews. The euro funding terrorists must pay for their war against the Jews.