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JERUSALEM: Israel’s opposition leader accused the government on Monday of resisting a state probe into the events surrounding Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, after an inconclusive, court-ordered cabinet meeting about a potential inquiry.
The Hamas attack, which triggered more than 15 months of war in the Gaza Strip, was the deadliest in Israeli history. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused accepting responsibility for failures, and his government has suggested that any probe should wait until after the fighting is over.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid, speaking in parliament, said that “the government did everything yesterday to bury this commission,” referring to a cabinet meeting late Sunday which ended with no decision on a formal inquiry.
Lapid said that an investigation was needed so that a similar attack “won’t happen again.”
He also accused Netanyahu of having ignored intelligence warnings before of the cross-border attack, and pursuing a policy to “strengthen Hamas” over several years prior to it.
The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Militants also took 251 hostages, of whom 73 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Following appeals from relatives of victims and hostages as well as NGOs, Israel’s supreme court on December 11 demanded the government meet within 60 days to discuss the creation of an inquiry commission.
The government met on the subject on Sunday and took no decision.
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday defended the government’s position and said that “in the middle of a war, it is not the right time to investigate.”
A fragile truce since last month has largely halted Israel’s military operations in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, whose health ministry says the war has killed at least 48,208 people in the territory.
Smotrich said that while he was “in favor of investigating” the October 7 attack, he “does not trust” the judiciary — a frequent target of criticism from Netanyahu’s government — with the responsibility.
According to Israeli law, if the government decides to set up a state commission of inquiry, it must inform the president of the Supreme Court, who is then responsible for appointing its members.
Since the 1960s, more than a dozen such commissions have been formed in Israel, notably after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, a 1982 massacre in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon by Israeli-backed militias, and the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
More recently, state commission was launched into a deadly 2021 stampede in which 45 people lost their lives during a Jewish pilgrimage in Israel’s north.
A bill to form a state commission of inquiry into October 7 was rejected by a majority of lawmakers on January 22.