With the IDF having disclosed last week in extreme detail its failures to block Hamas’s October 7 invasion, and with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refusing a state commission of inquiry into his actions after nearly 18 months, much of the media are now performing their own analysis of the head of government.
The central potential points of vulnerability for Netanyahu are claims that he:
1) was the primary or key co-architect of the policy of containing and trying to deter Hamas versus pursuing other options with the Palestinian Authority, the Saudis, and other moderate Sunni groups;
2) was the primary or key co-architect of the policy of facilitating Qatar sending millions of dollars per month to Hamas;
3) weakened the IDF in real terms and harmed Israeli deterrence vis-à-vis Hamas and other Iranian proxies in terms of perceived weakness due to the judicial overhaul;
4) vetoed several instances in which the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) wanted to assassinate top Hamas leaders who pressed for the October 7 mass invasion;
and 5) cannot blame the IDF for failing to try to update him about the pre-invasion signs as it was Netanyahu’s intelligence officer and personal military secretary who decided not to wake or update him.
Netanyahu's narrative
None of these points is one-sided, but Netanyahu’s failure to allow an independent review of these issues does not bode well for taking his narrative on them at face value.
For example, he can legitimately argue that the defense establishment supported containing and deterring Hamas and facilitating Qatari payments to keep Hamas from starting a sudden “needless” war over a lack of financing, as occurred in 2014.
But there is another side to this: It is possible that Netanyahu could have pursued a more aggressively diplomatic option directly with the Palestinians, or with a Saudi normalization package – normalize ties with Israel and oust Hamas, in the effort towards a broader resolution with the Palestinians.
Sources in the Mossad have said the Saudi option was concrete, but that the prime minister wanted to block it to keep Hamas in Gaza and to keep the Palestinian Authority weak and isolated in the West Bank – to thwart any two-state solution.
Regardless of whether these options would have worked, and the position of the defense establishment on deterrence, it seems undisputed that Netanyahu himself, as the primary decider of policy, was in favor of keeping Hamas in power, contained, and deterred – as opposed to the other options.
Likewise, Netanyahu can legitimately say that there were top defense officials, like former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen (2016-2021), who were in favor of facilitating the Qatari funding. But, there were defense officials who opposed this, and most defense sources portray the prime minister as an active promoter of the idea, not a passive accepter of recommendations.
Also, there were instances where even Cohen in 2021, and his successor, current Mossad Director David Barnea, recommended ending the Qatari funding.
While it appears that many IDF officials opposed this during prime minister Naftali Bennett’s era (mid-2021 to late 2022), leading to the Qatari funding to continue, even if limited in some ways, Netanyahu dismissed any such objections to Qatari funding when he returned to office in early 2023.
Also, the IDF provided Netanyahu a plan for conquering Gaza and ousting Hamas in 2014, with military sources saying he sabotaged the idea, leaking the estimated expected losses to the media.
Netanyahu, in turn, has said the IDF was against a larger operation in Gaza in 2014 to begin with.
Netanyahu and the judicial reform legislation
Regarding the judicial reform legislation, Netanyahu can legitimately accuse those reservists who publicized their intent to refuse to serve as being responsible for weakening the military.
However, the vast majority of the political establishment and the general public as of now believe that the legislation was too aggressive and too rushed.
Further, once the reservists’ public opposition was a fact on the ground, Netanyahu’s refusal to pause the judicial reform and his active avoidance of security warnings from top defense officials in March and July 2023 were viewed by many as a separate and significant error.
The IDF probes have now redeemed Netanyahu in a sense on this issue, with the conclusion that Hamas came close to invading Israel twice in 2022, long before the judicial plans were pushed.
Yet the fact that Hamas chose to go for the mass invasion in October 2023 at one of the lowest points for the IDF – in terms of readiness – due to the judicial reform debate and called off the 2022 attempts, still leaves significant room to blame Netanyahu on the issue.
The issue of assassinations is probably one of the hardest to evaluate.
There were times when Netanyahu approved daring assassinations and times when he did not. There were also times when the defense establishment pushed for daring assassinations and times when they did not. Still, there were times when the defense establishment was split on the issue.
All the different sides of this debate – trying to present only one side as having blocked assassinations – does not do service to the complex and constantly evolving circumstances.
The assassinations issue also cannot be separated from the broader strategy of how to best handle Hamas.
To the extent that both the defense establishment and Netanyahu believed that Hamas could be contained and deterred, there was always a fair argument against assassinations because such moves could lead to an “unnecessary” war.
All of these officials were wrong about deterrence and, therefore, maybe also wrong not to undertake the assassinations, but it is hard to say that Netanyahu versus specific members of the defense establishment were more or less responsible for the error of failing to assassinate top Hamas officials.
The one thing that can be said for certain is that all of the defense officials and Netanyahu carry joint blame on the issue.
Who's to blame for October 7?
Regarding the night of October 6-7, it has been unfair for Netanyahu to try to blame all of the disaster on those top IDF and Shin Bet officials who misunderstood the desperation and immediacy of the invasion signs.
Unquestionably, these top defense officials should receive additional blame for the errors they made that night. But the virtual universal view is that the largest error was the failed understanding that Hamas was deterred for the whole decade before, and this error was continued decisively on the evening of October 6-7.
In the pre-October 7 mentality, it appears that the signs on the eve before the invasion would not have been sufficient to lead Netanyahu or anyone else to suddenly realize that their decade-long view of Hamas was completely wrong and to rush huge reinforcements to the border.
In that light, the new revelations that Netanyahu’s personal intelligence official received updates from top defense officials about the signs of an invasion, which he passed on to Netanyahu’s personal military secretary, and which that secretary did not pass on to the prime minister, probably do not change a lot.
What they do change is that Netanyahu should be holding his fire against the top IDF and Shin Bet officials for not realizing an invasion underway because his personal security officials fell into the same trap.
Indirectly, this means that he had given them the impression that he should not be woken up for a borderline security issue, not all that different from Unit 8200 chief Yossi Sariel.
In short, the IDF and the Shin Bet have plenty to answer for. But so does Netanyahu.