JERUSALEM: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly on Sunday apologised for accusing security and intelligence officials of failing to see signs of the devastating Hamas raid that prompted Israel to invade Gaza.

The Israeli premier, who has faced strong opposition criticism over security lapses, had made his accusations in an overnight post on X, formerly Twitter, which he later deleted, replacing it with an apology.

“Never, under any circumstance, was prime minister Netanyahu alerted to Hamas’ intent to launch a war,” he wrote in the now-deleted post.

“On the contrary, all security officials, including the head of military intelligence and the head of Shin Bet (internal security agency), believed Hamas was deterred.

Leading Israeli businessman calls for Israeli PM’s ouster

“This was the evaluation that was submitted time and again to the prime minister and the (security) cabinet by all security officials and the intelligence community, right until the war broke out,” it read, the message posted in the middle of the night.

The post was published on X hours after Netanyahu gave a press conference late Saturday, in which he was asked if he had been warned about the danger of an attack.

It was deleted on Sunday morning and replaced a few minutes later.

“I was wrong,” he declared in the new post. “Things I said following the press conference shouldn’t have been said, and I apologise for that.

The Likud party chief would face considerable pressure if an independent inquiry found the government was negligent. Although Netanyahu has said there will be an investigation, he has given no details about how it would be handled.

Meanwhile, the head of leading auto technologies firm and one of Israel’s leading businessmen, Amnon Shashua, on Sunday urged the immediate ouster of Netanyahu and his government.

In a high-profile public rebuke from Israel’s private sector, Shashua said Netanyahu’s government was guilty of “failures, dissonance and incompetence”.

“We must cut our losses and do it quickly. The only solution to the current situation in Israel is to replace the government, and it needs to happen immediately,” Shashua wrote in an opinion piece in financial daily Calcalist.

Netanyahu’s office, asked by Reuters, declined to comment on Shashua’s editorial.

The government, Shashua said, which seemed more concerned about its political survival than “the good of the country,” could be replaced without calling a new election, minimizing political turmoil, with the formation of a new coalition within the current parliament.

Netanyahu has not taken responsibility over intelligence and operational failures, saying only that there would be time to ask tough questions, including of himself, after the war.

Shashua co-founded Mobileye in 1999. It was bought by Intel in 2017 for $15.3 billion and last year again went public. He also founded One Zero digital bank and AI firm AI21 Labs.

Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2023