28 February 2017•Update: 01 March 2017
By Kaamil Ahmed
JERUSALEM
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his closest advisors failed to adequately prepare for 2014’s military onslaught against Gaza or share intelligence with other government officials, according to a state-level probe the findings of which were released Tuesday.
The report found that Netanyahu, then-Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, and Israeli military and intelligence chiefs had failed to brief Israel’s security cabinet on the threat of cross-border tunnels dug by Hamas from inside the Gaza Strip.
“The political establishment, the military establishment and the intelligence bodies were aware of the tunnel threat and even defined it as a ‘strategic threat’,” the report, prepared by State Comptroller Joseph Shapira, reads.
“Yet the actions taken to deal with the threat did not correspond with its definition as a ‘strategic threat’,” it adds.
The report goes on to assert that the security cabinet never discussed possible alternatives to military action, such as taking steps to ease the dire humanitarian crisis in the blockaded Gaza Strip.
Israel’s 2014 military onslaught killed some 2,300 Palestinians and left much of the enclave’s infrastructure in ruins, while leaving at least 70 Israelis -- 65 soldiers and five civilians -- dead, according to Israeli figures.
In anticipation of the report’s release, Yaalon wrote on Facebook this week that expected criticisms about his and Netanyahu's handling of the conflict were “nonsense”.
