Political Responsibility Is Not an Election

Accountability cannot be outsourced to a ballot box. The public debate surrounding October 7 continues to bypass the central question: establishing responsibility. It is clear that the catastrophe was not the work of one man alone. The IDF failed, Military Intelligence failed, the Shin Bet failed, and the political leadership failed. The entire strategic conception collapsed.

However, collective failure cannot become collective immunity. The prime minister, who stood at the head of the establishment and shaped Israel’s security and strategic policy toward Hamas for years, bears the highest political responsibility. That responsibility does not disappear simply because other actors also faltered.

Recent investigative reports make confronting this reality more urgent than ever.
According to an investigation based on a book by journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed reportedly warned Benjamin Netanyahu less than two weeks before October 7 that Yahya Sinwar was planning a massive escalation described as an “earthquake.” According to the report, the assessment within the prime minister’s office was that Hamas was primarily focused on the West Bank, and the information reportedly was not passed on to the heads of the security establishment. In response, the Prime Minister’s Office categorically denied the account, calling it a “complete lie.”

This denial matters, but so does the allegation. If substantiated, this report points to a profound failure at the political center of the state. While defenders of the prime minister have long argued that the security establishment failed to transmit warnings upward, such reports suggest that critical information may also have failed to travel downward from the top.

This dynamic connects directly to a long-standing strategy that collapsed. Under governments led by Netanyahu, Israel approved the transfer of Qatari funds into Gaza under the erroneous assumption that it would “buy calm” and preserve stability. That policy must now be judged by its catastrophic results: Hamas utilized those years to dramatically expand its military capabilities and tunnel networks.

Beyond strategic failure, affairs such as “Qatargate” and the investigations surrounding aides and close associates within the prime minister’s office (including Jonatan Urich, Eli Feldstein, and Yisrael Einhorn) raise deeply troubling questions regarding the penetration of foreign interests and improper influence near the centers of power. Even if these remain allegations and ongoing investigations that have not yet matured into definitive judicial findings, their public significance is unmistakable: the environment surrounding decision-makers must remain entirely free from the shadow of foreign influence.

This is precisely where the core issue lies. A leader cannot claim exclusive ownership of diplomatic and security achievements while deflecting all responsibility for failures onto bureaucrats, military commanders, or advisors. Governance, judgment, and management culture are tested first and foremost at the top of the pyramid.

Nearly three years after the massacre, Israel still operates without an independent state commission of inquiry, the absolute minimum mechanism required to address a disaster of this magnitude. Political systems cannot investigate themselves, and the public is entitled to full, unbiased answers regarding what transpired before October 7, the nature of received warnings, the conduct of the political echelon, and the capital-influence networks surfacing around centers of power.

Upcoming elections are no substitute for an investigation. A ballot can decide who governs the country next, but it cannot erase the past, clear away severe miscalculations, or serve as a proxy for administrative and public accountability. Political accountability begins long before any court ruling or criminal indictment. A leader does not need to be criminally convicted to fail his country, nor can he evade the burden of public justification.
Israel has already paid an unbearable price for a system that mistook assumptions for strategy. The last thing the country can afford now is to mistake another election for accountability.