TEL AVIV – Two and a half years after Israel’s summer 2014 Gaza war, Israel’s comptroller general on Tuesday released his report on the 50-day conflict, with findings ranging from ill-preparedness vis a vis the tunnel threat and inappropriate reliance on military brass for strategic decisions that should have been made by civilian government authorities.
In his voluminous report on what is known here as Operation Protective Edge, State Comptroller Yosef Shapira admonished Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his security cabinet for insufficient attention to strategic objectives regarding the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Cabinet meetings on the issue, he wrote, were “limited,” particularly regarding alternative options to use of military force.
War objectives that were authorized by the government, he wrote, were determined by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and not by the security Cabinet.
“The Cabinet is the long arm of the government, and according to basic law, the military is subordinate to it,” he wrote. He took Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to task for not involving other relevant ministers in decisions taken between the two of them at the recommendation of the IDF.
“In a democratic country, such decisions can not be left to a very narrow number of decision makers,” he wrote.
Shapira found that essential information that Cabinet ministers needed in order to make informed decisions was never fully provided, or, for that matter, even asked for in the weeks prior to the July 7 outbreak of combat. This, he wrote, was despite the fact that information was in the hands of Netanyahu, Ya’alon, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, then IDF chief of staff, his chief of military intelligence at the time and the former head of the Shin Bet security service.
As for the attack tunnels that breached Israel’s border and claimed a large portion of the 75 Israeli lives lost in the conflict, the watchdog faulted the defense establishment and the political leadership for underestimating the technologies, tactics and procedures needed to combat the threat. It further took Netanyahu and his security cabinet to task for not holding comprehensive and meaningful discussions on the subject, even though Netanyahu and Ya’alon, his defense minister at the time, had declared the tunnels a “significant strategic threat.”
Further, Shapira found that, once again as in all of Israel’s prior wars, the government did not sufficiency utilize the nation’s National Security Council, relying instead of assessments by the IDF and the Shin Bet security service. “Improprieties were found in the cooperation between the defense establishment and the National Security Council which is supposed to assist the Cabinet and support it in the process of its decision-making,” he wrote.
In a lengthy section devoted to the tunnel threat, the Israeli watchdog noted that despite the Comptroller’s repeated reports and warnings, preparedness in the face of the subterranean threat marks “a persistent and enduring failure.”
He noted that in the years that preceded the latest Gaza war, investments were made in myriad means of intelligence collection. Nevertheless, holistic efforts by the intelligence community were incomplete; a matter of too little and too late.
Beyond intelligence shortfalls, the report criticized the IDF and MoD for lack of doctrine, operational concepts and the technological tools needed to defend adequately against the subterranean threat. It further took IDF operational planners to task for improvising their way through the last 10 days of the war. “Only … the heroism and courage and initiative of the commanders and soldiers in the field enabled the IDF to fight in the Gaza tunnel domain,” according to the report.
In response to the long-awaited report, Netanyahu disparaged the ability of the State Comptroller and the head of his defense division to thoroughly and accurately provide an unbiased after-action account. “The results of the war speak for themselves,” Netanyahu said about Israeli deterrence that has resulted in two-and-a-half years of relative quiet along its southern border.
As for the IDF, it said in a statement that it is studying the main points of the report and is implementing lessons learned. With regard to the tunnel threat, the Feb. 28 statement noted that it has invested more than two billion shekels (US$550 million) “to address the underground terror network and to find a technological solution.”
The IDF stated that prior to the operation, its intelligence directorate “dedicated wide-scale systematic intelligence gathering efforts and resources in order to address the tunnel issue.” Those efforts, it maintained, “enabled infantry forces to locate the majority of the tunnels and reveal their routes.”
It insisted that “no proposed existing solution, technological or otherwise to confront the tunnel threat, was overlooked prior to the operation.”
Since the war, it said the IDF has codified an operational doctrine and has instituted a comprehensive training program to combat the threat. Additionally, it has invested “efforts and resources in the research, development and equipping of technological systems in accordance with their operational readiness.”
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