The battle over who is at fault for Oct. 7 is real fight between IDF, comptroller – analysis

There is no war going on in Gaza. The IDF defeated Hamas mostly by early February and finished it off in most of Rafah by late June.

Certainly, there are clean-up operations, and over the course of a month, some days, single digits of terrorists are killed when the IDF uncovers their hiding places, and some days, some dozens.

But almost all of the terrorists are in hiding, and there are no large battles and have been none since late June, just as there were no large battles (with one short exception for a week in March) in Gaza between February and May.

This reality makes it clear that the latest version of the fight between IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi and State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman are not concerned about how busy the military is but about who will determine the narrative of who is at fault for October 7.

Halevi is worried that Englman will place all the blame on the military, leave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu relatively untouched despite his being one of the fathers of “the concept” that maintaining a deterred Hamas running Gaza was a good plan, and in any case, Halevi wants a state inquiry with broader powers of Netanyahu and the government.

Englman has noted that – for better or for worse – Netanyahu is not allowing a state inquiry, and that the country cannot afford to have had no independent larger review of the October 7 disaster, even if a state inquiry might be better and could happen at some later distant point.

The battle between IDF, state comptroller started in January

To backtrack, the fight started in January.

From October 7 until January, Englman did not broach the issue of investigating the October 7 failures.

He knew that as long as tens of thousands of IDF soldiers were fighting large battles in northern Gaza and then in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza as well as central Gaza, that it would be problematic to try to move the issue forward.

But by January, the IDF had publicly declared it had achieved operational control of northern Gaza and it also alluded to being close to crushing Hamas in Khan Yunis (which it announced formally by early February.)  

This was the point when Englman started to push Halevi to cooperate on his probe of October 7.

Halevi rebuked Englman for jumping the gun.

He pointed out that there was still fighting going on in Gaza, that the IDF might undertake new invasion, such as in Rafah, that there was still daily fighting going on with Hezbollah, and that the question of establishing a more secure reality for northern residents could lead to a much larger conflict.

With all of these issues on the menu, he said that the IDF needing to spend time being probed by the comptroller would take away its attention from what was an ongoing war.

Further, he pointed out that the comptroller had never probed the IDF mid-war, and only afterward.

For his part, Englman said he would focus on issues which were less central to needing to interview military commanders, such as security for the border villages, clearing the bodies of October 7 victims from the battlefield, and other such issues.

Also, Englman noted that the current war was the longest Israel had fought since the 1948-1949 Independence War, such that waiting until an amorphous end date was not an option.

Halevi responded that it might make sense for Englman to carry out a probe, but not before the IDF carried out its own October 7 probes.

In March, the IDF finally initiated its own October 7 probes, pledging to publish the results by May or June.

Whether because the April conflict with Iran or the May Rafah operation distracted the IDF from the probes, or because internal IDF political disagreements about the handling of the probes, the first IDF probe, on the battle of Beeri, was delayed until July 11.

Still, the IDF had committed in June that all of its many probes would be published over the course of July and August.

However, there was huge internal criticism of how Halevi handled the Beeri probe, leading the military to decide to slow down and restructure the rollout of the probes in order to account for the feedback they had received from field commanders.

As of Monday, the Jerusalem Post has learned that the announcement of additional IDF October 7 probe results is significantly further delayed and that there is not even a new expected roll out date.

Through the eight months of wrangling between Halevi and Englman, there are some small side issues which the IDF more recently agreed to cooperate on.

Against this background, the High Court of Justice on July 17 took the IDF’s side and froze any comptroller probe regarding the IDF (unless the military agreed to such a probe) until July 28 on all issues, and until October 31 on some issues.

The sides were supposed to negotiate in mid-late July to try to overcome their differences.

In fairness to the military, it agreed to probes on four side issues up from two, and then up to six side issues up from four.

In fairness, to the comptroller, he has agreed to roll back for longer some major issues. At the same time, he has insisted on covering 10 issues, four of which are somewhat major issues and which the IDF has not agreed to.

In response, the IDF on Sunday said that the current situation with Iran and Hezbollah is much worse now than it has been throughout the war, leaving its commanders as busy as ever, and prevents the military from cooperating with the comptroller until a much later date on the unresolved issues.

Also, the IDF added that it has not yet finished its own probes, and the comptroller must wait until those are done.

If the IDF seemed to have the high ground for pushing off the comptroller in January and even May, now that it has twice delayed its own probes publication for more internal military politics reasons and now that there is no war, but only skirmishes in Gaza for months, it now seems that the comptroller has the high ground.

If the military commanders from the South are less busy because there is very little of Hamas to fight, then they have time to talk to the comptroller. Some commanders like Maj. Gen. Dan Goldfus are now in important headquarters roles, but not roles which require them to be in the field and prevent them from doing some cooperating with the comptroller.

Some key IDF commanders, like Brig. Gen. Gaza Division Commander Avi Rosenfeld and IDF Intelligence Analysis Brig. Gen. Amit Sa’ar, resigned months ago, and are not even involved in the war at all. As of last week, we can add to this list outgoing IDF Intelligence Chief Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva.  

For the last three weeks, the IDF was on war footing for attacks from Iran and Hezbollah, but did not actually need to do anything. Commanders at headquarters could not have talked to comptroller representatives while waiting for an attack that took three weeks to come and was then over in half a day?

And commanders cannot talk to comptroller representatives now, when the Hezbollah threat appears to have significantly receded?

Delaying publication of the IDF probes at this point is clearly about framing them and not about assembling all the data, which was done months ago. That kind of a delay should hold back the comptroller?

Halevi may be right that there should have been a state inquiry started in January. And given how Englman started his term with defending Netanyahu in areas relating to public corruption and paying legal fees, worries about whether the comptroller might whitewash the prime minister also have some validity.

But since then Englman has grown a lot and has taken issue with the prime minister on more than one occasion. Also, Englman cannot really be fired so he has nothing to fear per se for criticizing Netanyahu. And if Englman does pay attention to politics, there is no one on the Right who does not criticize Netanyahu for failing on October 7. His support today comes more from those who want him to finish off Hamas versus ending the war, and to be tough with the Palestinian Authority, versus to strengthen it.    

In the meantime, Halevi probably retains the upper hand legally because the High Court does not trust Netanyahu or Englman very much either.

But his moral case for holding back the comptroller has already started to wane and at some point could collapse.