Opposition MKs, Bennett urge release of damning Gaza war report

Education Minister Naftali Bennett and opposition lawmakers on Monday pressed the government to make public a damning state comptroller report that is said to fiercely criticize the high-level security cabinet’s conduct during the 2014 Gaza war with Hamas.

A Knesset State Control subcommittee was expected to debate and vote on Tuesday on whether to release the report in full. According to Channel 2, the panel has a majority to unseal the report after Likud MK David Bitan, who is also coalition chair, announced he would support such a move.

The revised draft of State Comptroller Yosef Shapira’s report is said to intensify its criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon while toning down its disapproval of the conduct of the Israel Defense Forces, according to leaks to Israeli media.

Shapira’s report found that despite Netanyahu’s claims to the contrary, the prime minister and Ya’alon did not properly inform the high-level security cabinet of the extent of the tunnel threat, Channel 2 said in November. The cabinet was only notified of the dangers one week before the start of the war, after then-economy minister Naftali Bennett presented the ministers with the information and offered possible solutions to disarm the underground network, the report said, according to Channel 2.

Netanyahu has repeatedly denied that cabinet members were not apprised of the threats but two of his chief political rivals, Bennett and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, both of whom were cabinet members during the war, have repeatedly claimed that the cabinet was not properly updated on the issues.

Both Lapid and Bennett on Monday urged lawmakers to release the full report.

“We must not suppress the report on Protective Edge or use it to see heads roll,” but rather learn from it, said Bennett at the weekly Jewish Home faction meeting.

“Only the disclosure of the non-confidential elements and learning its details will allow us to move forward,” said Bennett. “I was there; we have what to improve upon.”

Yesh Atid leader Lapid said the government must make the report public for the sake of the bereaved Israeli families of soldiers killed in the 50-day conflict.

“They need to release the report for the families of the fallen, they deserve to know what happened there. There’s no room for politics when you are talking about the security of soldiers and well-being of residents of Gaza-area communities,” he said.

Lapid accused Netanyahu of attempting to bury the report for political reasons.

“The Prime Minister’s Office fears this report, because serious failures emerge from it,” he said. “Because the report reveals that the account the public received [on the war] was not the true account.”

Also joining the chorus was opposition leader Isaac Herzog.

“The Israeli public, and especially families who lost loved ones, deserve to know how their leaders acted when they sent their sons into battle, and how discussions on new strategic threats, chief among them the tunnels, were carried out,” he said at the start of the weekly Zionist Union meeting.

In an unusual move, Netanyahu requested an additional meeting with the state comptroller in October in order to present him with information that would show the cabinet was informed. But the leaks from the revised draft two months ago appeared to indicate that Shapira remained unconvinced by Netanyahu’s testimony.

Channel 2 also reported in November that the latest version of the report softened its criticism of the Israel Defense Forces, as the army’s shortcomings are no longer described as “a grave failing.”

A number of tunnels were used by Hamas fighters to infiltrate Israel and carry out deadly attacks on troops during the Gaza Strip conflict in the summer of 2014. During that campaign, dubbed in Israel “Operation Protective Edge,” Israeli forces discovered and destroyed at least 34 tunnels, many of them leading into Israeli territory.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.