State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman on Tuesday accused the Defense Ministry, the IDF, and the National Security Council (NSC) of failing to provide physical defenses for critical infrastructure sites.
Some critical Israeli sites were struck by Iranian ballistic missiles during the June war, including Beersheba’s medical center, the Haifa Bazan oil refinery (which suffered damage to pipelines and transmission lines), various important laboratories at Rehovot’s Weizmann University, and a number of others.
According to the comptroller, this issue was first flagged in 2011 by a division of the ministry, and his office issued a detailed report highlighting all the vulnerabilities in 2020, but virtually all efforts to date on this issue have been ignored.
The issue of physical defenses is distinct from air defenses such as the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, the Arrow, and the Iron Beam. Those defenses are designed to prevent an aerial threat from crossing into Israeli airspace or getting anywhere near a variety of Israeli installations or residential areas.
In contrast, the comptroller is taking various authorities to task for not providing specific physical defenses to specific critical infrastructure installations in the event that a missile breaks through the air defenses and strikes that installation.
Protecting critical sites: Israel lacks legal framework
Englman said that this issue was vital, given that, however strong Israeli air defenses are, they are not hermetic, and that Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran all succeeded at harming different critical sites at points in the war, sites which had no physical defenses.
According to the comptroller, there are multiple obstacles to providing defenses for these sites.
First, the defense establishment has failed to map out these sites to have a comprehensive list.
To the extent that some mapping has occurred, all parties know that this process has been insufficient and is not updated remotely.
There is no legal procedure for adding new sites to the list, the comptroller warned.
No law has been passed to create a legal framework for the processes to protect these sites and to boost efforts to do so in the political and defense arenas.
Among the various bodies involved in the issue: the Defense Ministry, the Rahel disaster response organization within the ministry, the IDF, the NSC, and the Finance Ministry, no one has tried to resolve disagreements about which body must provide funding for the highly expensive defense project.
The Jerusalem Post understands that the standoff over who will be the lead funder is one of the sticking points, with multiple bodies, including the private sector companies themselves, would likely be willing to contribute some funding if they are not the lead.
Without processes and funding, there has been little progress regarding how to provide the physical defenses. Such decisions are a prerequisite to likely years of planning and construction.
Although the report does not specifically mention the issue, a major challenge is whether all sites are physically feasible to fully defend.
For example, much of critical IDF functions have shifted to underground locations, or at least backup underground locations have been developed, to maintain their operations in the event of a larger aerial war.
Could all electricity, water, medical, and other critical infrastructure truly be moved underground, even if there were funding to do so?
How would doing so impact their operations in the present?
The Post has learned that this could be one of the tough dilemmas, but that there are many other options for making it harder to strike or even detect Israeli critical infrastructure without moving underground.
Englman has also leveled some specific allegations. He said that the Defense Ministry has specifically played games with the issue, punting responsibility for it from one subdivision to another, seemingly looking for a way out of having to confront the issue head-on.
In addition, the comptroller slammed the ministry for failing to address the issue even once the war started and even once the home front came under massive barrages of ballistic missile fire.
In fact, the report said that the ministry and the NSC only made progress on one of five major deficiencies, at least starting the work of a committee to delve deeper into the issue.
Further, the report noted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally intervened on the issue in November 2023, ordering the NSC to obtain results.
However, the NSC only started to press the Defense Ministry for specific progress in June 2024, and the ministry then ignored the NSC deadline of July 2024 for providing a substantial update.
Only in December 2024, just as then-defense ministry director general Eyal Zamir was about to leave his post and become the next IDF chief, did Zamir order his subordinates in the ministry to make new progress on the issue.
The report also periodically makes vague references to other security bodies that have flagged vulnerabilities and that must assist with the process.
The Shin Bet and the Israeli Atomic Energy Agency’s activities are often kept classified.
Israel's defense ministers did little to keep sites secure
Meanwhile, the report did not seem to indicate that any of the many defense ministers since 2020 have attempted to make any progress on the issue.
Englman specifically said that Defense Minister Israel Katz and Zamir, as the current IDF chief, have ongoing primary responsibility for fixing the issue.
More specifically, the report said that Katz must designate the lead on differing aspects of the issue, whether it be financing, mapping out the sites, or implementing the new physical defenses at the sites.
The comptroller also said that the NSC and IDF chiefs must put forward specific proposals to help the prime minister move forward with the issue on aspects in which he needs to be personally involved.
Also, Englman said that Netanyahu should take a more active role in the issue, rather than waiting for other officials to come to him with proposals.