JERUSALEM // Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision-making was badly flawed as he oversaw a deadly Israeli naval raid on a Gaza-bound ship two years ago, according to a government report released yesterday.
The harsh findings were an embarrassing assessment of Mr Netanyahu's handling of a military operation that sent Israel's relations with once-close ally Turkey plummeting and drew international condemnation.
But it is unlikely to hurt his domestic standing. Mr Netanyahu leads a powerful coalition that controls three-fourths of parliament's seats. Moreover, many Israelis think naval commandos opened fire in self-defence after pro-Palestinian activists attacked them.
Eight Turks and a Turkish-American were killed on May 31, 2010, after the commandos stormed the Mavi Marmara, which had set out from Turkey at the head of a flotilla trying to breach Israel's Gaza blockade.
"Substantive and significant deficiencies were discovered in the decision-making process ... that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu led and oversaw," the state comptroller, Micha Lindenstrauss, wrote in the report.
"The prime minister's decision-making process took place without orderly, coordinated and documented team work, even though the senior political, military and intelligence ranks were aware that the Turkish flotilla was different from other flotillas," it said. Mr Netanyahu, the report continued, "did not internalise that the forcible stopping of the flotilla was liable to spark a violent confrontation on the decks of the Mavi Marmara."
Mr Netanyahu has said that Israel behaved responsibly in its handling of the affair. "Israeli citizens enjoy a level of security they did not have for many years," he said in response to the report.
The prime minister of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, demanded that Israel apologise to Turkey and lift its blockade on Gaza.