Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid denied any discussions with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about forming an official investigation committee for the events of October 7, 2023.
“For everyone who asked, there are no contacts with Netanyahu regarding the composition of a state investigative committee,” Lapid wrote on X on Sunday.
“There is a law, and the law is clear: only the President of the Supreme Court determines the composition of an investigative committee,” he added.
Lapid also emphasized: “I will not participate in any games. We need an investigation committee, and it should be set up immediately.”
Meanwhile, Israeli Army Radio reported that Netanyahu is attempting to collaborate with the opposition to select members for the investigation committee into the October 7 failure.
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“Netanyahu’s goal behind this is to prevent the President of the Supreme Court, Israel’s highest judicial body, from selecting the members of the investigation committee and to ensure that a judge from the same court is not chosen as a member of the committee,” the report stated.
Unlike military leaders and political officials in Israel, Netanyahu has not yet accepted responsibility for failing to anticipate the attack by Palestinian resistance fighters on October 7.
Netanyahu has repeatedly asserted that an official investigation committee into these attacks should only be formed after the war concludes.
However, on Thursday, families of Israeli captives and soldiers killed in the war submitted a petition to the Supreme Court, urging the government to establish an official investigation committee.
On Friday, the court ordered the government to respond to the petition within a month.
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Ongoing Genocide
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 37,877 Palestinians have been killed, and 86,969 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli war has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many Palestinians, mostly children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’.
(PC, Anadolu)
