BICOM

A long-awaited report was released yesterday by Israel’s State Comptroller into a forged document that exacerbated serious tensions between Defence Minister Ehud Barak and then Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi. Known as the ‘Harpaz document’, the forged paper prepared by Lt.Col. Boaz Harpaz, was first exposed in August 2010. The document, which was presented to Ashkenazi, purported to be evidence that Barak was conducting a campaign to discredit Ashkenazi and to build the credentials of Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant as the next IDF Chief of Staff. It was known that Ashkenazi supported an alternative candidate to succeed him as head of Israel’s armed forces.

However, yesterday’s report by State Comptroller Yosef Shapira revealed that the ‘Harpaz affair’ was just one manifestation of a worrying feud between Barak and Ashkenazi during their time together at the head of Israel’s defence establishment. The report criticised Ashkenazi for not having handed over the ‘Harpaz document’ sooner, while Barak is censured for having obstructed senior IDF appointments. The State Comptroller found that relations between Barak’s and Ashkenazi’s respective bureaus had become dysfunctional to a worrying degree and the report calls the relationship between the two men as having been at times “disturbing and problematic.”

The report also criticised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not intervening to resolve the feud by spring 2010, “especially given the security challenges Israel faces.” In response, Labour Party leader Shelly Yachimovich said that Netanyahu has shown “lack of leadership in an incomprehensible situation,” while Hatnuah leader Tzipi Livni accused the prime minister of being “unable to manage, with a steady hand, Israel’s national security issues.”