IDF, Comptroller reach compromise of Feb. 2025 to probe Hamas invasion

The deal came after 11 months of fighting, under High Court pressure.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB NOVEMBER 21, 2024 18:49

A tour with the families of the abductees in Kibbutz Beeri (photo credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI)

The IDF and State Comptroller Metanyahu Englman on Thursday reached a compromise deal to begin the probe into the October 7, 2023 Hamas invasion disaster in February 2025.

More specifically, the sides will solidify the process and mechanism for the probe in February 2025, but the comptroller still agreed to take into account any special ongoing war circumstances for select delays on certain issues, such as if information was needed from a given commander still in the field.

While this compromise may have resolved the differences between the sides, especially if the larger part of the war in Lebanon and Gaza are concluded by then, it also left open the door for further disputes between the sides if the war reintensifies.  

In the meantime, secondary issues only incidentally related to October 7, such as how properly the home front is defended from rockets, can already start their probes now.

A year of back-and-forth

The deal came after a nearly year-long fight dating back to January in which the IDF tried to keep the comptroller at arms-length, while Englman persistently pressed on for compliance with his probe, with threats from the High Court of Justice finally breaking the logjam.

Yair Lapid gives a speech about his version of how the October 7 Massacre happened at a press conference with the unofficial civilian probe in Tel Aviv, August 29, 2024. (credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI)

On Sunday, the High Court set Thursday as a climatic deadline to resolve the year-long battle between Englman on one side and the IDF and Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara on the other side, over probing certain failures related to the October 7 disaster and related ongoing security problems.

Reading between the lives of the claims made by the lawyers from both sides at Sunday’s hearing, it seemed that the IDF was playing for time, hoping to reach a ceasefire in Lebanon before it has to cooperate with the comptroller, while Englman has lost patience with giving the military extensions.

In the background may be the IDF’s belief that once there is a ceasefire in Lebanon, various parties will finally succeed at getting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a state commission of inquiry, which will sideline the comptroller probe or make it less important.

The IDF has been suspicious that Englman is more aligned with Netanyahu and will place more of the blame for October 7 on the IDF, whereas the military views the prime minister as equally responsible as the architect of the containment, deterrence, and payment (allowing Qatar to bring funds to Hamas) of Hamas security strategy for Gaza.

Further, the military has said Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul campaign in 2023 weakened the military in the eyes of Hamas.

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From January until July, the High Court essentially sided with the IDF and held the comptroller at an arm’s distance, saying that the war was too current and intense to expect military commanders to divide their time between fighting and being probed.

However, the court started to shift toward mild pressure on the IDF to reach a compromise with the comptroller after July, and on October 14, started putting heavier pressure on the military.

Essentially, the court’s position emerged that even if a state inquiry would be preferable, given the absence of one, a comptroller probe – with certain parameters – was preferable to no outside probe.

During that October 14 hearing, Justices Noam Sohlberg, David Mintz, and Yael Wilner gave the IDF three weeks to make some more compromises toward Englman, after which if there was no deal between the sides, they threatened to issue a binding decision.

But negotiations made enough progress after three weeks, that the court gave the sides another week plus to reach an elusive deal.

At the hearing on Sunday, lawyers for Attorney-General and the IDF said that the sides had solved most of the disagreements about about what issues the comptroller could probe with the war still being ongoing as well as what the mechanism would be for passing on classified IDF information and what would or would not be allowed for interviewing commanders.

However, the comptroller’s lawyers only gave the IDF partial credit.

They said that the IDF for some weeks had seemed to show flexibility, and then in recent days had withdrawn back to a more rigid and less cooperative position.

The comptroller has also argued that publicizing security gaps related to the Nova festival on October 7, to security relating to east Jerusalem, and to dealing with the drone threat, as well as other home front defense issues, could help save lives in the future.

Since August, it has been relatively clear that the latest version of the fight between IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi and Englman is not just over how busy the military is, but about who will determine the narrative of who is at fault for October 7.

Earlier this year, the IDF also said it might make sense for Englman to carry out a probe, but not before the IDF carried out its own October 7 probes.

But from March until August, the IDF kept changing when it would publish its own probes.

In August, the IDF decided to indefinitely delay publishing the probes though it had committed to publishing them first in June and then in August.

There are still no near term plans to publish the probes.