Lawmakers advance bill to establish politically appointed Oct. 7 probe in place of state inquiry

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation votes to back Likud MK Ariel Kallner’s bill establishing a contentious “national state investigation committee” into the failures surrounding Hamas’s onslaught on October 7, 2023.

The plan is for the government-backed committee to conduct the investigation rather than an independent state commission of inquiry, which the government opposes but which polls show is backed by the majority of the public.

The bill is now slated to go to the Knesset plenum for a preliminary reading on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Netanyahu and his supporters have long rejected a state commission of inquiry, the country’s highest investigative authority, because its members would be selected by the judiciary, which his government does not trust and seeks to weaken through a judicial overhaul. As recently as three years ago, Netanyahu backed a state commission of inquiry into the conduct of the previous government.

Kallner’s proposal calls for a Knesset supermajority — 80 out of 120 MKs — to appoint a six-member committee and its chair. If there is no agreement after two weeks, both the opposition and coalition would be allowed to select three committee members each, who would be joined by four supervisory members representing bereaved families.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara yesterday excoriated the legislation, describing it as “tailor-made” for the “personal” needs of the government.

Baharav-Miara also said that a ministerial committee for deciding the mandate and scope of the proposed “state-national” commission, which is be led by Netanyahu and is set to begin deliberations today, is not operating under any real legal authority, since such committees only operate in conjunction with a state commission of inquiry established under existing law.

According to national broadcaster Kan, Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman today insisted that “the judicial system should be investigated first.”

Ze’ev Elkin of the New Hope party was the only minister to vote against the bill, with the Ynet news site reporting his opposition stemmed from the bill’s clause stipulating that if either the coalition or opposition does not cooperate in the process or cannot settle on a candidate, the Knesset speaker will choose instead — giving the coalition effective control in the event of an expected opposition boycott.