The Jerusalem Post

Success or failure?

- • By YONAH JEREMY BOB

Two years of soul-searching and months of high-stakes political battles will reach a climax on Tuesday as State Comptrolle­r Joseph Shapira publishes his landmark report on conduct during the 2014 Gaza war and the Hamas tunnel threat.

The 50-day war led to the deaths of 74 Israelis, some of whom were soldiers killed in surprise attacks from tunnels. It also included 4,251 rockets fired on the home front – paralyzing the South, briefly halting flights at Ben-Gurion Airport and leaving most regions of the country vulnerable at one point or another.

Shapira’s leaked conclusion­s and criticism threaten to topple Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or permanentl­y wound his “Mr. Security” image, making him far more exposed politicall­y when the next election comes along.

The report’s conclusion­s could tarnish the reputation­s of former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon, former IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz, former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) director Yoram Cohen and former National Security Council chief and current Mossad Director Yossi Cohen. They could also serve as a campaign boost for Education

Minister Naftali Bennett and Yesh Atid Party leader Yair Lapid.

On Monday, Lapid pressed Netanyahu to admit his failings and opposition leader Isaac Herzog slammed both Netanyahu and Lapid for mistakes described in the report.

Bennett has also been consistent­ly critical of the prime minister and the focus of Netanyahu’s counteratt­ack.

Leaked transcript­s of the security cabinet’s meetings during the war show that Bennett repeatedly confronted Ya’alon over the need to provide more informatio­n, and Gantz over Bennett’s desire for him to present more aggressive options for using force against Hamas.

Some key figures in the report who will likely emerge unscathed are former IDF intelligen­ce chief Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi, who is likely to be hit with heavy criticism, but is already IDF deputy chief of staff in waiting, and former Mossad director Tamir Pardo, who is frequently mentioned without being criticized. The former head of Southern Command, Maj.-Gen. Sami Tourgeman, is expected to be portrayed as insightful regarding the tunnel threat.

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman and former top Likud minister Gideon Sa’ar are two major political forces who, in the past, blasted Netanyahu regarding his conduct during the war. They have been more subdued recently and Liberman, in particular, appears to be treading carefully after moving from the opposition to leading the Defense Ministry.

The report is so significan­t that most of the figures previously mentioned, as well as a number of others, have been waging a media battle of leaks about the report for nearly nine months.

In May, Shapira asked the State Prosecutio­n to investigat­e who leaked drafts of the report, which was under gag order until Tuesday.

The Justice Ministry told The Jerusalem Post that it is still reviewing the leak issue, but when pressed to provide informatio­n about the status of its review, refused to provide any details, including whether the issue has become a full criminal investigat­ion or was merely a review.

To protect his stature, Netanyahu held an approximat­ely four-hour long session with the Post and other media outlets, of which about 90% was devoted to his narrative regarding issues raised by the report.

The three central criticisms made by the report are: The war was avoidable; 50 days was too long; and Netanyahu, Ya’alon and Gantz did not properly prepare the IDF, the security cabinet or the public for the scope of Hamas’s tunnel threat.

Besides those issues, leaks have indicated that blame has been placed on Netanyahu and Ya’alon for keeping the security cabinet out of strategy discussion­s on the country’s long-term plans for Gaza, such that the war itself was not directed at particular long-term goals.

Netanyahu, Ya’alon, Gantz, Kochavi, Yoram Cohen and Yossi Cohen are expected to be hit with criticism that they did not share all necessary intelligen­ce with the security cabinet.

The leaks also indicate that the picture presented to the security cabinet was devoid of the possibilit­y that Hamas might overreact and escalate into a full war on any given incident, if Israel escalated it s military force beyond the usual targets, and of the true extent of the threat posed by the tunnels.

Further, the leaks indicate that the Hamas tunnel threat was only discussed by the security cabinet in March 2014, and only in a serious manner when the war was kicking into high gear.

Even within the IDF, insufficie­nt resources and attention were allocated to coping with the tunnel threat, leaving IDF forces on the front lines having to come up with ad hoc solutions for destroying them.

The unnecessar­y length of the war, which had terrible consequenc­es for the country, is said to be attributed to miscommuni­cation between the political and military echelons.

The report is also expected to slam the security cabinet ministers for failing to show sufficient interest or sufficient­ly preparing themselves on a range of issues regarding the war.

Moreover, the report will likely criticize the National Security Council for failing to push the various parties to fully discuss all relevant war and peace issues and present the security cabinet with all the relevant intelligen­ce. A side point to that criticism is that the IDF and the defense establishm­ent at times withheld intelligen­ce and failed to cooperate with the council.

Collective­ly, the report’s conclusion­s call into question whether the war was a success or a failure, and whether top officials managed war and peace issues successful­ly or deficientl­y.

Netanyahu, Ya’alon and Gantz have generally responded to the report’s leaked conclusion­s by attacking Bennett, while not comprehens­ively addressing the report’s conclusion­s.

One exception is that sources close to Netanyahu have disputed the report’s conclusion­s that the war was unnecessar­y or too long, citing the extended quiet that has been achieved since its conclusion.

The report on the security cabinet’s decision-making processes and the Hamas tunnel threat are the second and third parts of a fourpart report by the state comptrolle­r on different aspects of the war.

The first part concluded that the security establishm­ent had not properly prepared portions of the home front for Hamas’s rocket onslaught, while the fourth part, expected to come out soon, will discuss the extent to which Israel’s use of force complied with internatio­nal law. •

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