It turns out that Israel was not the only place where, on October 7, there was a dilemma over whether to wake the person in charge. Hezbollah, too, apparently debated whether to wake Hassan Nasrallah at 6:30 in the morning. This adds another piece of evidence to the theory that Nasrallah was caught off guard by Hamas’s attack and knew nothing about it beforehand. This anecdote seemingly reinforces the unofficial defense of outgoing Mossad chief David “Dadi” Barnea regarding the Mossad’s role in the October 7 intelligence failure.
If Hezbollah knew nothing and Iran knew nothing, then obviously the Mossad could not have known either, and it bears no responsibility for the intelligence failure. “We tried to infiltrate Gaza several times,” people close to Barnea said, “but Shin Bet refused.” And what about the transfer of Qatari money to the Gaza Strip, some of which flowed to Hamas? After all, the Mossad was the most important factor in persuading Qatar to transfer the money. The Qataris even held and published a letter on the matter from Yossi Cohen, the Mossad chief. Barnea claims that he strongly opposed the transfer of these funds.
Up to this point, the argument is convincing. But there is one question to which Barnea has no answer: Why did the Mossad not recommend the most practical alternative to Qatari money — money from the Palestinian Authority? After all, the whole issue began when the Palestinian Authority refused to continue transferring money to Gaza because it had no involvement there. It would seemingly have been possible to propose expanding the PA’s involvement in Gaza in exchange for its continuing to transfer the funds. The Mossad chief believed this had no chance of succeeding, that there was no way to persuade the prime minister.
Barnea was not alone. Many of the heads of Israel’s security establishment had already internalized the prime minister’s red lines. Therefore, when discussing the government’s policy before October 7 — strengthening Hamas while weakening the Palestinian Authority — we should also mention who enabled Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Benjamin Netanyahu to carry out this masquerade: the heads of the security establishment. They knew very well how much the Palestinian Authority contributed to thwarting terrorism, saw firsthand how the PA was weakening, and yet none of the security chiefs dared confront Netanyahu over his policy.
This is not merely a matter of settling historical scores. It is directly relevant to what is happening now in the Gaza Strip. Under international pressure, the Palestinian Authority has carried out several reforms in recent months: it enacted a new election law intended to prevent Hamas from running in elections; it adopted a mechanism designed to stop payments to the families of terrorists. (This was done somewhat cleverly: funds are still transferred to families in need, and there is often an overlap between families in need and families whose breadwinner is imprisoned for a security offense.) The PA is certainly unpopular, corrupt, and exhausted. But on the other hand, it is better than Hamas.
It is clear that the leaders of the “Anyone But Bibi” bloc will not pressure Netanyahu to allow a significant Palestinian Authority presence in the Gaza Strip as a counterweight to Hamas. No one will dare demand that Netanyahu present even a distant vision of a two-state solution as a means of pressuring Hamas to disarm. Yair Lapid has already said on Nadav Perry’s podcast that a Palestinian state will not happen in the next ten years. Gadi Eisenkot — apparently on the advice of his American adviser — is now firmly in the center-right camp, while Yair Golan, according to a report that has not exactly been denied, refuses even to meet with the president of France.
In this impossible situation, is there any point in placing our hopes on the heads of the security establishment? The Shin Bet chief and the head of Central Command certainly will not go along with it.
Is there any chance that the IDF chief of staff, the head of Military Intelligence, or the head of the IDF Planning Directorate will dare to say something — or are we all going to slide into yet another war?