Lapid: Opposition won’t cooperate with any ‘political commission of inquiry’ in place of official Oct. 7 probe

By Sam Sokol 23 December 2024, 3:58 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid attends a conference held by the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem on November 20, 2024. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The opposition will not cooperate with any “political commission of inquiry” established by the government in place of an official state probe, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid declares.

“We will not be part of a fraud,” he tells reporters ahead of his Yesh Atid party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset.

“The coalition’s proposal says that if the opposition does not cooperate, then the president will be the one to choose the representatives for the committee. That will not happen,” he says.

“President Herzog will not humiliate himself, nor will he humiliate the institution of the presidency, by cooperating with a blatant attempt to escape responsibility.”

Last week, Israel Hayom reported that Likud MK Ariel Kallner is pushing a bill to establish such a probe into the events of October 7, 2023, in place of a state commission of inquiry. His proposal is said to stipulate that both the coalition and opposition choose representatives on the commission and that in case of a boycott, President Isaac Herzog will choose in place of the opposition.

Netanyahu has been considering such a move to head off the establishment of a state commission of inquiry, to which he has vehemently objected, for some time.

“They are afraid. Netanyahu and his people know what will be revealed as soon as the protocols and documents are released, as soon as the security establishment can say what they know, as soon as all those involved in the most terrible disaster in our history are summoned to testify,” Lapid continues.

“They are afraid of the truth. They do not want the Israeli public to know the truth,” he says, adding that “the only committee that can be established, the only committee that can be trusted, is a state commission of inquiry.”

Earlier this year, a state commission of inquiry named Netanyahu as one of several officials responsible for the 2021 Meron disaster, in which 45 people were killed in a crush at the hilltop gravesite of the second-century sage Shimon Bar Yochai in northern Israel.