JERUSALEM: An Israeli state inquiry has accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top army brass of being unprepared for the strategic threat of tunnels used by Hamas during the 2014 Gaza fighting.

The findings of the two-year inquiry sparked a frenzy among Israel’s political establishment after their official release on Tuesday, with critics of Netanyahu using the opportunity to slam the premier’s allegedly flawed decision-making process.

“The political establishment, the military establishment and the intelligence bodies were aware of the tunnel threat and even defined it as strategic. And yet the actions taken to deal with the threat did not match this definition,” state comptroller Yossef Shapira wrote in the report.

The report said Netanyahu and then-defence minister Moshe Yaalon did not fully share information they had on the tunnels with other members of the security cabinet, speaking instead in “sparse and general” terms.

The two men also failed to provide ministers with “significant and essential information,” necessary to make “well-informed decisions” on the situation in Gaza ahead of the war, the report said.

After the report’s release Netanyahu again defended his record, saying in a statement the tunnel threat was discussed 13 times in cabinet.

He said the invasion of Gaza was a “success” as Israel handed out the “harshest blow to Hamas since its inception”.

Destroying the tunnels and stopping Gaza-based Palestinian militants, particularly Hamas, from launching rockets into Israel were the key declared goals of Israel’s third offensive in the coastal territory in six years.

The tunnels were among the Palestinians’ most effective weapons during the 50-day conflict.

In one particularly notable attack, five soldiers were killed when a Hamas fighter emerged from a tunnel near the Nahal Oz kibbutz inside Israel on July 29, 2014.

But tunnels were also used inside Gaza once Israeli forces invaded, with a number of soldiers allegedly killed when Hamas fighters emerged from them.

Shapira’s report concluded Netanyahu, Yaalon and the chief of staff “did not ensure the army had operational plans for fighting in urban areas with tunnels”. The 2014 war killed 2,251 Palestinians and left 100,000 homeless, according to the UN. On the Israeli side, 74 people were killed, all but six of them soldiers.

Yaalon, who during the war was a close ally of the premier only to resign last year from Netanyahu’s Likud party and political life in acrimony after a dispute, also defended his record.

“Those who played politics in the security cabinet in an unprecedented way during the war will continue to do so this week,” Yaalon wrote on his Facebook page prior to the report’s release.

Published in Dawn, March 1st, 2017