Civilians without a response, late grants, lack of information, and government ministries that rely on civilian operations rooms – this is only part of the State Comptroller's severe report on the first month of fighting. "The Israeli government has failed," declares Comptroller Mattaniahu Engelman, and in the new report is interpreted as a placenta. The report is an interim report, while its full version will be published only later. The State Comptroller announced that he would also investigate the security failure that led to the disaster.
Volunteers sorting donations for residents of the envelope and soldiers, photo: Coco
"The Israeli government failed to deal with the home front in the first weeks of the Iron Sword War," declares State Comptroller Engelman upon publication of the report. The lack of implementation of an economic assistance program to the public at the very beginning of the operation, along with the evacuation of the residents from their homes, created a situation in which hundreds of thousands of civilians became a needy population. Ministers and ministries must draw lessons from public complaints and act to improve service to the citizens of the country, especially during this emergency." The comptroller also announced that he intended to open an audit of the security issues both before the October 7 massacre and the conduct of the political and military echelons that day and thereafter.
According to the special report of the Ombudsman in the Comptroller's Office, during the first 43 days of the war, 1,329 calls related to the state of emergency were received on the hotline opened by the Ombudsman, with an emphasis on residents of the conflict lines in the south and north. The government ministries and state institutions that received the largest number of inquiries were the Home Front Command (130 requests), the National Insurance Institute (119), the Ministry of Labor (74), the Tax Authority (70), and the Ministry of National Security (57).
State Comptroller Matanyahu Engelman (Archive), photo: Oren Ben Hakon
Residents found it difficult to receive service from state authorities
The common denominator of the requests received lies both in the residents' difficulty in receiving services from state authorities and in matters directly related to the state of war, such as protection, the activity of educational institutions, eligibility for special grants and treatment of evacuees. The report shows that, in contrast to normal times, during the war more women filed complaints (53.6% compared to 43.4% in the annual report for 2022).
For example, according to the report, the implementation of the government's economic assistance program to the public was delayed for a long time, and this constituted a fundamental failure. This is even more true for residents of the south and north from the private sector, including the self-employed, who described to the State Comptroller and Ombudsman the reality of their lives under conditions of uncertainty: they suffer from a lack of income and on the other hand are obligated to pay expenses such as paying employees' wages, payments to suppliers, and credit repayments to banks. The lack of implementation of an economic assistance program to the public at the very beginning of the operation, along with the evacuation of the residents from their homes, created a situation in which hundreds of thousands of civilians became a needy population.
There is a lack of a governing body to coordinate the activities of government ministries in the field
The report notes that government ministries set up call centers, but there was no unifying factor. "The absence of such an element harmed the public service of the various centers," the comptroller noted. He also writes that in mid-October, the government decided on a national action plan to evacuate the population from the conflict lines in the south and north.
Evacuees from the Gaza envelope at a hotel on the Dead Sea, photo: AFP
Initially, the lack of government representation at the evacuees' sites was conspicuous. Over time, the presence of representatives of government ministries, including the Ministry of Social Affairs and Social Security (hereinafter: the Ministry of Social Affairs) and the Ministry of Education, and at some sites also the Prime Minister's Office, the Ministry of Health and others, increased. However, "there is still a lack of a governing body to coordinate the activities of government ministries on the ground and coordinate between them. For example, in hotels housing evacuees, there is not a single government entity that coordinates the information on all the evacuees staying in each hotel and their various needs," the comptroller wrote. According to the comptroller, the ministries' representatives solved problems for civilians "by contacting a civilian aid room operated by volunteers."
Clumsiness and difficulty in receiving financial compensation
The auditor revealed a variety of cases that came before him. Both are particularly serious. For example, we received a call from a man whose two brothers were at a Nova party – one of the brothers was murdered and the other survived but his car burned down. The owner of the car received confirmation from the police that the vehicle was burned, but when he contacted the Tax Authority for compensation for the vehicle, he was told that he had to go identify it before receiving compensation. The brother approached the Commission on behalf of the owner of the car, who due to his condition finds it difficult to advance the handling of his affairs. He said the vehicle could not be located and identified, and all his attempts to contact the Tax Authority on the matter were unsuccessful. Only after the intervention of the auditor the matter is resolved.
The party at Nova, photo: Ido Darby
In addition, an evacuee from a community in northern Israel asked to put her two-year-old daughter in a kibbutz daycare center in the Jordan Valley Regional Council, but the daycare refused to take in the evacuees' children. The possibility of registering the girl in a daycare center in another locality was examined, but the evacuee was required to produce a certificate that the girl had been removed from the daycare center in her locality, which could not be done due to the state of war. Only following the comptroller's intervention did the council open a designated residence for the evacuees.
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