Knesset lawyer nixes MKs’ debate on leaked Gaza report
Eyal Yanon says parliamentary discussion based on divulged classified information would contravene standard procedure
The Knesset’s legal adviser Monday banned lawmakers from holding a plenum debate about a leaked draft of a damning state comptroller report on the 2014 Gaza war.
In a written decision, Eyal Yanon told Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein that using a leaked report containing classified material as the basis for discussion would be a contravention of standard procedure.
“A debate in the Knesset plenum or in one of the committees on the draft of the state comptroller’s report…is not possible,” Yanon wrote. “A formal debate in the Knesset on a draft that was illegally leaked as this was would be collaboration of the Knesset in that serious matter.”
He noted: “A debate on a draft that is not laid before the members of Knesset violates the right of the audited parties to a fair and proper process and their right to respond as is proper for debate in the Knesset.”
State Comptroller Yosef Shapira’s report, which was leaked to some Israeli media outlets last Thursday, reportedly criticizes government failings in the lead up to and execution of the 50-day conflict with Hamas. In recent days it has become a major political football in the public discourse.
Opposition lawmakers had gathered the requisite signatures to demand a discussion on the subject and MK Erel Margalit of the Zionist Union launched an online campaign demanding Netanyahu release the report.
During the summer 2014 campaign, known in Israel as Operation Protective Edge, the army set as a central goal the destruction of tunnels dug by Hamas under the border from the Gaza Strip and into Israel. Hamas used the tunnels to launch several deadly attacks inside Israeli territory and the IDF destroyed dozens of the passageways in the course of the fighting.
According to Hebrew media sources who saw the 70-page document, the report claims that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and then-IDF chief Benny Gantz withheld information from the cabinet about Hamas tunnel construction and the tunnels’ capabilities.
According to the sources, Shapira also accused Netanyahu and Ya’alon of failing to provide the security cabinet with real-time updates regarding the imminent threat of war with Hamas.
The prime minister and the defense minister were further said to have concealed warnings by the Shin Bet security service in early July 2014 regarding the potential for war with Hamas, according to Channel 10 television. The conflict began on July 8, 2014. Members of the security cabinet were only apprised of the Shin Bet warning once the fighting was underway, the report said.
On Sunday, a furious Shapira requested that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit launch an investigation into how the confidential report came to be leaked.
