‘Stop playing with the generals,’ Lapid told Bennett during Gaza war

Further animosity between senior Israeli officials during the 2014 war with Gaza cabinet discussions was revealed Thursday as more explosive leaks from those meetings came to light.

Ahead of the impending release of a State Comptroller report said to be fiercely critical of Israel’s political and military command during war, Yedioth Ahronoth published a second round of transcripts painting a picture of a deeply fractious leadership before and throughout the military operation.

The latest excerpts reveal a web of distrust and discontent between the then-ministers of defense, foreign affairs, finance and education, and a general skepticism toward the information being provided by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a transcript from July 1, 2014, a day after the bodies of three Israeli teenagers kidnapped and murdered by a Hamas cell were found, then-education minister Naftali Bennett hurls criticism at then-defense minister Moshe Ya’alon for what he calls a “weak and disgraceful” response.

A day later, Yair Lapid, who served at the time as finance minister slams Bennett for “playing with the generals” suggesting they were underplaying the treat of terror-tunnel emanating from Gaza.

In the months before the kidnapping, the IDF had uncovered a number of tunnels from Gaza reaching into Israel, leading to assessments that Hamas terrorists were planning a large-scale attack. Bennett has contended that the security cabinet was not given enough information about the threat.

“I demand a plan for the tunnels,” Bennett tells the security cabinet on July 2, according to the Yedioth transcript.

“The tunnel problem is new and we have no response,” Netanyahu responds before Ya’alon interrupts to contradict the prime minister. “We are ready with plans,” Ya’alon says.

Frustrated, Lapid tells Bennett: “The debate about neutralizing the tunnel threat is not for the security cabinet. This isn’t a battalion commanders’ forum.”

“This is really not for battalion commanders, this is for the security cabinet,” Bennett says.

“Stop playing with the generals,” Lapid replies.

State Comptroller Yosef Shapira’s report — the public release of which the Knesset pushed off on Tuesday due to security considerations — is said to show bitter infighting among members of the security cabinet, especially between Ya’alon and Bennett over the conduct of the war in Gaza, dubbed Operation Protective Edge.

Leaked transcripts published by Yedioth Ahronoth on Monday highlighted the bitter divide between Ya’alon and Bennett, with the two clashing over Israel’s approach to the war and how aggressive a response to take to the threat of attack tunnels built by Hamas reaching into Israel.

Thursday’s excerpts show Ya’alon accusing Bennett of undermining him by contacting senior field officers behind his back.

“You will not run my army, you will not come from the field and tell me, ‘we should do this, we shouldn’t do this,’ you hear?” Ya’alon tells Bennet during a July 15 meeting.

“I will, if the truth is not being reported,” Bennett replies.

The conflict between the two reached new heights this week, as Ya’alon and Bennett traded barbs at the Institute for National Security Studies’ conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, with Ya’alon hinting that Bennett leaked the conversations of the cabinet meetings “to get a few ‘likes’ on Facebook,” while Bennett characterized the military’s approach under Ya’alon as being defined by “rigidity and footslogging.”

Following the latest Yedioth report, Ya’alon accused Bennett of causing damage to the cabinet and its procedures, the Hebrew-language Walla News site reported.

The new transcripts also shed light on how the ministers differed in their approach to accepting a Hamas ceasefire.

In a conversation reported to have taken place on July 15, a week into the fighting and two days before the ground operation was launched, Ya’alon and Netanyahu try to persuade the cabinet to accept an offer from Hamas to end hostilities.

“The IDF’s accomplishments are excellent. Now we need to decide whether we accept the ceasefire,” then-IDF chief of Staff Benny Gantz tells the security cabinet.

“There is willingness on Hamas’s part to end the escalation. That much is clear,” head of the Military Intelligence Directorate at the time, Aviv Kochavi says.

Both Ya’alon and Netanyahu appear to be in favor of accepting a deal.

“We’ve won,” Netanyahu says. “We inflicted 180 losses [of lives] on them. We must demand the demilitarization of the tunnels and the elimination of rockets.”

But Bennett objects to the ceasefire, saying that, “The tunnels haven’t been destroyed, we must destroy them first.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect the correct date of Bennett’s demand for an IDF plan against the tunnels.