Leaked wartime transcript exposes leaders bitterly divided over how to fight Gaza

TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF

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Quotes from highly secret 2014 security cabinet discussions show Bennett leading push for aggressive offensive as defense brass argues against provoking war, underestimates tunnel threat

Israeli army troops operating in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge (IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)

Leaked transcripts of discussions between senior Israeli officials during the 2014 war with Gaza published Tuesday paint a picture of a deeply fractious leadership, with ministers riven over whether to pursue an aggressive offensive or simply seek to contain Hamas before and during the bloody 50-day conflict.

The rancorous transcripts, published by the Yedioth Ahronoth daily, offer a near-unprecedented glimpse into the inner working of the secretive body, which is charged with overseeing wartime decision making.

The publication, which may violate information security rules, comes as lawmakers are mulling the release of a state watchdog report that reportedly excoriates the cabinet over failing to properly prepare for and counter threats from terror group Hamas during the war.

In the excerpts, which begin in the lead-up to the war, then-economy minister Naftali Bennett, from the hawkish Jewish Home party, is seen leading a camp pushing for immediate and heavy action against Gaza, despite the possible high human costs.

“Be galloping horses, not lazy bulls,” Bennett chides the IDF chief of staff at one point, pushing for a plan to destroy a network of tunnels used by Hamas to attack Israeli soldiers both in the Strip and in Israel.

Others, led in the cabinet discussions by then-defense minister Moshe Ya’alon, but including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-finance minister Yair Lapid, insisted on a more restrained response, even as Israeli cities were bombarded by rockets from Gaza and IDF soldiers were dying in bitter gun battles in Gaza.

Over 70 Israelis were killed in the war, most of them soldiers, and over 2,000 were killed on the Palestinian side in an intense bombing campaign and ground invasion in Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas.

Israel, which launched the offensive — dubbed Operation Protective Edge — to stem rocket fire and later to also destroy Hamas’s subterranean military infrastructure, maintains that over half of the Gazans killed were fighters.

The transcripts published by Yedioth begin on June 30, over a week before the war and just hours after troops combing the West Bank found the bodies of three Israeli teenagers kidnapped and murdered by a Hamas cell from the Hebron area, an attack that would soon snowball into the full-fledged conflict.

In the months before the kidnapping, the IDF had uncovered a number of tunnels from Gaza reaching into Israel, leading to assessments that Hamas terrorists were planning a large-scale attack.

As Israel cracked down on Hamas members in the Palestinian territory in response to the triple abduction and murder, an attack that shocked much of the Israeli public, rocket fire from Gaza into Israel intensified and public pressure for a response grew.

Tunnels not there to rust

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The transcripts show, though, that while Bennett was pushing for a response to the tunnels, most others were wary of provoking a fresh war.

“The response to the [murder] until now has been weak and shameful,” Bennett lashes out in the transcript. “In Gaza there are dozens of tunnels intended for kidnappings. They’re not there to rust,” he is quoted as saying.

“We have to take the initiative,” he insists.

According to Yedioth, the “rust” comment is likely a dig at Ya’alon, who, in the run-up to the 2006 Second Lebanon War, said Hezbollah’s rockets would “rust” in their warehouses. Hezbollah fired thousands of those rockets at Israeli cities in the course of the war that summer.

All the ministers oppose Bennett’s proposal for a Gaza escalation.

“The tunnels are a real threat to the State of Israel,” Netanyahu says, “and they could change the [strategic] balance between us and them. Bogie,” he turns to Ya’alon, using his nickname, “I want you to present a plan tomorrow that includes taking control of the openings.”

File: Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon with IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Yair Golan and other soldiers, April 14, 2015. (Ariel Hermoni/Ministry of Defense/Flash90)

read more: Leaked wartime transcript…

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