Shafaq News/ In a late-night tweet Saturday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his claims that he had not been warned by security chiefs about an impending Hamas attack, drawing sharp criticism over the apparent attempt to evade responsibility for the failure.

He deleted the post some nine hours later.

“Contrary to the false claims: Under no circumstances and at no stage was Prime Minister Netanyahu warned of Hamas’s war intentions,” read the tweet, posted shortly after midnight following a joint press conference with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Minister Benny Gantz.

“On the contrary, all the security officials, including the head of military intelligence and the head of the Shin Bet, assessed that Hamas had been deterred and was looking for a settlement. This assessment was submitted again and again to the prime minister and the cabinet by all the security forces and intelligence community, up until the outbreak of the war,” the Prime Minister’s Office said.

Netanyahu’s statement, seeming to place blame on Israeli security officials for the failures leading to the October 7 operation, rather than accept any responsibility himself, drew sharp criticism Sunday morning, including from within his emergency government.

“The prime minister must retract his statement and stop addressing this matter,” Gantz tweeted in response on Sunday, in what appeared to be the first public disagreement between the two since the National Unity party leader joined the coalition following the outbreak of war.

“On this morning in particular, I want to support and strengthen all the security forces and IDF soldiers, including the IDF chief of staff, the head of military intelligence, the head of the Shin Bet,” Gantz added. “When we are at war, leadership must display responsibility, make the correct decisions and strengthen the forces in a way that they will understand what we demand from them… the prime minister must retract his statement.”

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, who has refused to join the emergency war government, tweeted that “Netanyahu crossed a red line tonight” and must apologize.

“While IDF soldiers and officers are fighting bravely against Hamas and Hezbollah, [the PM] is trying to blame them, instead of supporting them. The efforts to evade responsibility and place blame on the security establishment weakens the IDF while it is fighting Israel’s enemies,” Lapid said.

Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, considered a close Netanyahu ally, said Sunday morning to Kan public radio, “Responsibility is something you take at the start of your job, not midway.”

Cohen noted that when he led the Mossad, “everything that happened in the agency, from top to bottom, was my responsibility.”

Cohen, who left his post in June 2021, said that he did not want to address “whether there were any warnings” leading up to the devastating October 7 attack.

Cohen added that he had not been privy to intelligence reports since he left his role, but that the heads of intelligence services are the ones ultimately responsible for understanding intelligence reports and passing that information to the appropriate channels.

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir also joined the criticism of Netanyahu’s since-deleted post, writing that “the problem isn’t specific warnings, but rather the entire mistaken concept. The policy of containment, the imaginary deterrence, and buying temporary quiet for an exorbitant price” were the cause of the entire problem.

Ben Gvir added, however, that such a discussion “is not for now,” but that there will be “a lot of time afterwards for an accounting,” alluding to the position he will likely adopt after the war against Netanyahu’s policies of trying to contain Hamas.

Netanyahu’s late-night tweet came just hours after the prime minister took questions from reporters for the first time since the outbreak of the war, during a Saturday night press conference alongside Gallant and Gantz.

During that appearance, the prime minister once again stopped short of taking any responsibility for the security failure that enabled the attack, according to the Times of Israel.

“After the war everyone will have to give answers, myself included,” he said, repeating comments he made earlier in the week. But, he stressed, “there was an awful debacle.”

He also refused to commit to setting up a state commission of inquiry — the most powerful and consequential investigative panel — to investigate the failings that enabled the Hamas attack. “There will not be a stone left unturned,” he said, adding that his focus right now was only on winning and “saving the state.”

Netanyahu was also asked whether his government’s judicial overhaul efforts had distracted attention from security challenges, and said the legislative proposals to weaken the courts are “no longer on the agenda” and that disagreements had been resolved in the face of war.

Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, which began with a surprise attack by the Palestinian fighters, questions have swirled around the government's responsibility for the intelligence and operational failures which enabled the cross-border attack to occur