ALBAWABA - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a 55-page document with his story of what happened during the attack led by Hamas on October 7, 2023. This move has been harshly criticized by members of the opposition and former security officials.
The document was sent as Netanyahu's official answer to Matanyahu Englman, who is Israel's State Comptroller and is looking into the political and security problems that led up to the attack. For safety reasons, three pages of the paper were crossed out.
There was no admission of guilt.
In the whole report, Netanyahu avoids taking personal blame for the intelligence and military mistakes that let Hamas attack. Instead, the paper relies heavily on parts of reports written by top security officials. Many of these parts have been criticized for being selective or taken out of context.
Netanyahu says that long-term policy choices, like Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 and its withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, are to blame for the strategic breakdown. He says that over time, these steps made Israel less of a threat.
The security establishment was criticized.
Netanyahu puts a lot of the blame on Israel's intelligence and defense agencies, saying that they told him over and over that Hamas had been effectively scared off and did not have the means or the intention to start a large-scale attack. According to the paper, intelligence reports showed that Hamas could only do a few things, mostly through tunnels or small-scale border crossings.
Even when strange signs showed up in the days before the attack, Netanyahu says security officials told him not to make the military more ready so that things wouldn't get worse than they needed to be.
Order of Events of the Attack
The prime minister says that his military secretary sent him a message at 6:29 a.m. telling him about the attack. He later said that he wondered if the leaders of Hamas could be attacked and if the reserve troops should be called up.
He also talks about an intelligence report that the head of Israel's domestic security service made before the attack. In it, it was said that the chances of a large-scale attack were low.
Disclosure of Targeted Killing
Netanyahu admitted that Israel used an outside agent to kill Hamas commander Mazen Fuqaha in 2017. This is a big deal because it shows that Netanyahu has always supported targeted killings as a way to keep people safe.
Pushback from Opposition
The leaders of Israel's opposition quickly denied Netanyahu's story. Former army chief Gadi Eisenkot said the paper was misleading and selectively put together, while opposition leader Yair Lapid said the prime minister ignored repeated warnings before the attack.
Civil groups that want an independent state commission of inquiry said the report tries to shift blame and hide who is responsible instead of fully addressing what went wrong on October 7.
