Report: Shin Bet head warned Netanyahu in July 2023 that Israel was headed for war

In July 2023, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that war was almost certainly in Israel’s future unless something changed in the way the country was being run, Ynet reports.

The report comes after Opposition Leader Yair Lapid told an independent civilian commission of inquiry on Thursday that there had been multiple instances prior to October 7 in which security officials had told Netanyahu that policies being pursued by his government had eroded Israeli deterrence.

According to the report, on July 23, 2023 — one day before the government voted in favor of the first major piece of judicial overhaul legislation — Bar requested a meeting with the prime minister in which he warned him that, due to the contentious legislation and the divisions it had created in Israeli society, Israel’s enemies saw weakness, and therefore an opportunity to launch an attack that would result in war.

“Today I give you a warning of war. We don’t know the day and time that it will break out,” Bar is quoted by Ynet as having said.

He is reported to have issued the same warning to Lapid later that day.

The report adds that although Bar was certain that Israel was heading for war, he was likely referring either to a war in the north with the Iran-backed Hezbollah, or an escalation in the West Bank into a third intifada that could later expand, rather than war with Hamas.

In response to Ynet, the Prime Minister’s Office says that Netanyahu “did not receive a warning about the war in Gaza — not on the purported date stated in the article and not a minute before 6:29 a.m. on October 7.”

Referring only to the war in Gaza, the PMO does not deny that a more general warning was issued.