JERUSALEM: Tension is escalating between Israel’s political and military top brass over accountability for the failures behind the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused of sidestepping blame.
Weekly protests against Netanyahu’s leadership of the subsequent two-year war in Gaza and demanding the return of hostages became emblematic of the anger boiling within parts of Israeli society over how the attack and its fallout have been handled.
Much of the Israeli public has been calling — in vain — for an independent inquiry into the events leading up to the 2023 Hamas attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people.
Polls show more than 70 percent of Israelis want a state commission of inquiry, which have been set up in the past to investigate major state-level failings.
The one established after the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war led to the resignation of prime minister Golda Meir in June 1974.
The decision to create a commission rests with the government, but its members must be appointed by the president of the supreme court.
Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government has accused the court of political bias.
More than two years on from the Hamas attack, no such inquiry has been established, and Netanyahu once again rejected the idea in parliament on November 10 — accusing the opposition of seeking to turn it into a “political tool.”
Netanyahu is no stranger to the art of political survival. The 76-year-old is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, having spent more than 18 years in the post across three spells since 1996.
“Netanyahu doesn’t take responsibility for anything: it’s always someone’s fault,” said Yossi Mekelberg, a Middle East expert at the London-based think-tank Chatham House.
“The idea that after these two years, there’s no inquest, and he tried to escape it — most Israelis won’t accept it,” he told AFP.
‘Puzzling’
Israel’s military announced on Sunday the dismissal of three generals and disciplinary action against several other senior officers over their failure to prevent the October 2023 attack.
The move came two weeks after the publication of a report raking over the military’s internal investigations into the October 7 attacks.
Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, Israel’s top military chief, appointed an independent committee of experts to undertake the review.
In presenting their findings on November 10, Zamir called for a wider “systemic investigation,” to learn lessons from the October 7 onslaught.
According to Israeli media, the remarks were seen as a betrayal by Netanyahu, for whom Zamir had served as a military adviser.
On Monday, Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that he had commissioned a review of the committee’s work.
The decision was swiftly labelled “puzzling” by Zamir.
The military “is the only body in the country that has thoroughly investigated its own failures and taken responsibility for them,” said a military statement on Zamir’s behalf.
“If any further examination is required to complete the picture, it must take the form of an external, objective and independent commission,” it added.
‘Yes man’
According to independent analyst Michael Horowitz, Katz is seen by the Israeli public as a “political loyalist, a ‘yes man’ who rarely diverges from Netanyahu.”
Friction between the political and military elite is not a new phenomenon under Netanyahu, he told AFP, but the recent spat is unusually public.
“The main reason is that this isn’t about personality so much as a divide as to who is to blame for October 7, and how this question should be settled,” he said.
Netanyahu has said there will be no state commission of inquiry before the end of the war in Gaza.
Instead, in mid-November, the government announced it was setting up an “independent” probe into the October 7 failures — but one whose composition would be chosen by a panel of cabinet ministers.
The move sparked anger in Israel, with thousands of protesters rallying in Tel Aviv on Saturday to demand a full state commission of inquiry.
“It should be an objective committee,” Eliad Shraga, the chairman of the NGO Movement for Quality Government, told AFP at the protest.
“A committee who will really find out how come that we had such a failure, such a crisis.”
Netanyahu has so far never acknowledged responsibility for the failures that led to October 7.
“He has one strong and straightforward incentive not to take responsibility,” Horowitz told AFP.
“Accepting the blame means leaving office. After all, almost all of those who accepted part of the blame have left.”
Netanyahu has said he will stand in the next elections, to be held before the end of 2026.
