Report chronicles emboldening of Hezbollah amid Netanyahu-Gallant tensions in 2023
Probe says PM nixed meeting on response to infiltration from Lebanon on day he fired Gallant; intel officers were at IDF HQ on Oct. 6, handling Gaza threat unrelated to Hamas invasion
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a top-level meeting in March 2023 at which he and Israel’s security chiefs were to have decided how to respond to an infiltration by a Hezbollah operative two weeks earlier, and then fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant that same night, an investigative report said Saturday, asserting that the prime minister had placed his “political agenda” ahead of national security needs.
Netanyahu is currently again widely reported to be considering firing Gallant.
The Channel 12 report also said Israel has had “dozens” of clear-cut opportunities to assassinate Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in recent years, but chose not to act for fear of sparking a major war.
It also said several intelligence officers spent the night of October 6 last year on “high alert” at IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv, successfully dealing with a “significant” threat from Gaza unrelated to the Hamas massacre. The Hamas invasion, which IDF intel had not foreseen, began early on October 7.
In an investigative feature tracing what it described as the erosion of Israel’s deterrent capabilities against both Hezbollah and Hamas, the report cited as a significant milestone in that erosion a March 13, 2023, roadside bombing by the Hezbollah infiltrator at Megiddo Junction, some 70 kilometers from the northern border, and Israel’s response to the bombing. The explosion narrowly missed a passing bus and badly injured the driver of a passing car. The Hezbollah terrorist was killed.
The report said IDF intelligence officials had information ahead of the planned infiltration but believed it had been called off. As it turned out, the infiltrator had scaled the border fence with a ladder on March 10 and made his way deeper into Israel.
After the highly unusual bombing, the report said, senior IDF officers including Northern Command chief Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin recommended that Israel respond forcefully, with an airstrike on a Hezbollah target, regarding the Hezbollah attack as a significant escalation.
IDF Intelligence Directorate chief Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva favored a “lukewarm” response, for fear of an escalation into war. IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi backed the more forceful approach.
On March 20, in the wake of the incident, Defense Minister Gallant reportedly met with Netanyahu and warned him that Hezbollah had identified weakness because Israel was deeply divided over the coalition’s judicial overhaul, and was therefore acting with greater boldness.
On March 25, a day before Netanyahu and the top security brass were scheduled to meet to determine which approach to adopt, Gallant publicly warned that the coalition’s judicial overhaul plans were causing rifts in the military that posed a tangible threat to Israel’s security.
Netanyahu, who had flown to London that weekend, returned on March 26, abruptly canceled that day’s meeting without explanation, and fired Gallant.
The meeting was rescheduled for March 28. When it convened, Mossad chief David Barnea also recommended hitting back hard at Hezbollah, the report said. But Netanyahu and Gallant — whose dismissal had not yet taken effect and would subsequently be rescinded — ultimately decided to target an Iranian base in Syria instead.
Days later, Netanyahu said on Channel 14 that Israel’s response had “focused the attention of Hezbollah” and that Israel had “attacked in many ways.”
In fact, however, the report went on, Nasrallah was undeterred. In subsequent months, he allowed Hamas terrorists to fire into Israel from Lebanon, set up two tents at the Har Dov border, and had his Radwan forces drill for an invasion of the Galilee. This planned invasion, the former IDF chief and ex-war cabinet observer Gadi Eisenkot has said, would have constituted an effort by Hezbollah to send thousands of gunmen into northern Israel “and create a new strategic reality.”
The report also asserted that Israel had “dozens of operational opportunities” to assassinate Nasrallah in recent years but chose not to. The consequence, it said, would have been a major war.
The report also said Hezbollah crossed “all the red lines” just a few weeks before October 7, in a “dramatic incident” whose details are barred from publication. Israel, it said, did not respond to this incident.
A different Gaza incident
The same Channel 12 report also said IDF intelligence officers were at the army’s Kirya headquarters in Tel Aviv on the night of October 6, 2023, hours before the Hamas invasion and massacre, because they had “concrete” intelligence regarding a specific threat from Gaza unrelated to the eventual terror onslaught, which resulted in some 1,200 people killed and 251 taken hostage.
It said that the officers spent the night at the Kirya on high alert, and that the specific “significant” threat was dealt with successfully.
The report said it could not go into further details because reporting restrictions have been imposed on the incident.
The IDF’s Intelligence Directorate head at the time of the Hamas massacre, Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, announced his resignation in April.
On October 17, 2023, Haliva acknowledged failing to warn of the impending Hamas attack: “The Military Intelligence Directorate, under my command, failed to warn of the terror attack carried out by Hamas,” Haliva said. “We failed in our most important mission, and as the head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, I bear full responsibility for the failure.”
The head of the Military Intelligence Research Department, Brig. Gen. Amit Saar, announced in March that he would resign once the military wraps up its internal probes into its blunders.
The Channel 12 report noted that Haliva, Saar and then-IDF chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi all said in public remarks at a December 2022 security conference that Hamas was deterred and not interested in escalated hostilities against Israel, as Netanyahu had also contended repeatedly before the October 7 massacre.
