Has Netanyahu's postponement of a state commission of inquiry into October 7 backfired? - analysis

For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, postponing a state commission of inquiry into October 7 may have looked like the sound political move.

Netanyahu’s stated argument in the aftermath of the massacre was that the time for a national inquiry would come after the war. That argument had a certain practical appeal. A country fighting on several fronts has urgent demands on its political and military leaders’ attention. An inquiry into the greatest security failure in Israel’s history would be long, difficult, and divisive.

It was also politically convenient. Why open the door to testimony, documents, and potentially damaging findings while trying to hold a coalition together through a war? Why allow an independent commission to establish a public record that might place at least part of the responsibility for October 7 at your doorstep? What politician with an eye on reelection would welcome that?

And, somewhat counterintuitively considering the anger in the country following the attack, Netanyahu appeared to have his eye not only on remaining in power but on running again. A commission of inquiry that produced damaging findings before an election could only hurt his chances.

Netanyahu, against considerable odds, has now made it to the end of his term. The election is less than a month away, and no state commission of inquiry has been established to examine the decisions that preceded the Hamas attack. If part of the calculation was to prevent its findings from shaping the next election, that part worked.

Or did it?

Postponing inquiry does not end questions

The difficulty with postponing an inquiry is that postponement does not end the questions. It leaves them hanging, waiting for someone else to answer them. And that is what is happening now, in the final weeks of the campaign.

Reports that leaders in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates warned Netanyahu of danger from Gaza before October 7 have thrust the days and weeks before the attack back into the limelight. Netanyahu has denied receiving such warnings.

The accounts remain contested, as do crucial questions about what, precisely, was said, how specific the warnings were, and whether any information reached Israel’s security agencies through other channels.

Meanwhile, a public confrontation has erupted between Netanyahu and former Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar. Netanyahu has accused Bar of knowing of warning signs during the night before the attack and failing to inform him. Bar denies that accusation. He says he warned Netanyahu of danger before October 7 and has called for the release of documents that he says would establish what the prime minister knew. The two are making claims about different points in the period leading up to the attack, and each is challenging the other’s account.

What is taking place now is not a commission weighing all the evidence, examining the documents, and questioning witnesses. It is a political argument conducted through statements, selected documents, media reports, and threats of lawsuits. The public is left to judge sharply conflicting claims without access to anything near a full record.

And that is the potential boomerang in Netanyahu’s strategy. An independent inquiry before an election could have damaged him. Without it, the campaign is full of speculation about what did and did not transpire before the attack.

Every new disclosure opens another question that triggers a response. Instead of containing October 7 as an issue, the failure to establish what happened has allowed it to return repeatedly, each time with a new set of allegations. And this is now dominating the agenda.

The timing could hardly be worse for the prime minister. Netanyahu wants to shift the election from who failed to protect the country on October 7 to who fundamentally changed the Middle East since then and who can protect Israel now: who stood up to Iran, who prosecuted the wars against Hamas and Hezbollah, and who can navigate a hostile international environment. His argument rests on his experience, his resolve, and the threats the country still faces.

The reports about the period before October 7 pull the discussion in the opposite direction. They ask what the country’s most experienced prime minister understood about the threat that materialized on his watch, and what exactly he did with the information available to him.

That question does not absolve the IDF, the Shin Bet, or anyone else of responsibility. Their failures were profound, and a serious inquiry would have to deal with them as well.

No one account is widely accepted

But the prime minister cannot make questions about his actions before October 7 go away by pointing to failures elsewhere. He has ultimate political responsibility for the security policy his government pursued. The issue now is not whether he personally knew the date and hour of Hamas’s attack. It is what warnings reached him, what they conveyed, what decisions followed, and whether the government’s view of Hamas made it less willing to recognize a growing danger.

There is an irony here. A state commission might have given Netanyahu a forum to challenge the claims against him. It could have demanded relevant documents, questioned witnesses, and established whether the accounts emerging now are accurate, exaggerated, or wrong. It might also have found much that supported his argument about failures in the security agencies.

Instead, no account is widely accepted across the political divide. Netanyahu didn’t want a state commission and advanced a different mechanism, one whose composition and mandate would be shaped by politicians. His supporters argue that a commission appointed through the usual process would itself lack public trust.

None of this means that the latest reports will change the election result. Many voters formed their views of Netanyahu long ago; others will judge him on the wars that followed October 7, the economy, military service, or the available coalition alternatives. And an earlier commission, had one been established, might have produced headlines still more difficult for him than those appearing now.

But if politics played a part in the decision to delay, the apparent advantage was clear: get to election day without the findings of a state commission hanging over him. Netanyahu has done that. What he could not do was ensure that the questions themselves would fade.

He now faces the election with the facts of what preceded October 7 still bitterly contested – and with those arguments playing out in public, weeks before the vote. Whether that proves more politically costly than the inquiry he resisted is something voters will decide on October 27.