Israel's state comptroller, retired Judge Joseph Shapira, has apparently intensified his criticism of the way that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon made decisions concerning the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) readiness to face the threat posed by Hamas tunnels along the Gaza border with Israel.
Political and military figures who read the Nov. 18 final draft of the state comptroller’s report on the issue told Al-Monitor that most of the criticism revolves around the fact that neither Netanyahu nor Ya’alon shared the IDF’s intelligence about the threat posed by the tunnels with the members of the Security Cabinet. In the meantime, the prime minister was hit with the “submarine scandal” (questioning Netanyahu’s motives behind the deal), which pushed the draft of the state comptroller’s report from the main headlines, though apparently not for long. The actual report is due to be released soon. It will inevitably lead to questions about how detailed, up-to-date information about the tunnels, known to almost every military officer of high and low rank serving in the Southern Command, was not brought before the Security Cabinet. As a result of this glaring omission, the IDF was left without a response to the armed Hamas fighters who penetrated Israeli territory during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014.
