The state commission investigating the submarine and naval vessel affair will begin closed-door hearings on personal responsibility in November, moving the long-running inquiry toward its final report.
The commission, chaired by retired Supreme Court president Asher Grunis, has scheduled 18 hearing days between November 1 and December 31 for five senior officials who received warning notices in June 2024.
They are Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; former Defense Minister Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon; former National Security Council chief Yossi Cohen; former Navy commander V.-Adm. Ram Rothberg; and former NSC official Avner Simchoni.
The warning notices allow the five to challenge the evidence, question witnesses and argue against any personal findings before the commission completes its work.
Thursday’s announcement followed a decision issued Wednesday granting them an additional 60 days, until September 15, to submit the names of witnesses they want to question and what they plan to ask them about.
Commission rejects Netanyahu attorney’s explanation for delay
Their requests for more time ranged from two to four months. Netanyahu’s attorney did not specify how long an extension he wanted.
Although the commission granted the same two-month extension to all five, it rejected Netanyahu’s lawyer’s explanation for the delay.
The attorney said his office had been unable to maintain contact with Netanyahu over the past year because the prime minister was undergoing cross-examination in his criminal trial.
The commission said the argument could not be accepted.
Unlike the other four officials, https://awekcun.leakedpics.workers.dev/israel-news/article-903573Netanyahu was not listed as a prosecution witness in the separate criminal case surrounding the vessel affair. His lawyers could therefore have begun reviewing the commission’s materials in April 2025, roughly 15 months earlier, it said.
The panel also noted that each official was allowed two attorneys, but Netanyahu’s team completed the necessary security-clearance process for only one lawyer, around 10 months after the other legal teams.
That followed a High Court petition in which Netanyahu’s lawyers argued that limiting each official to two attorneys was not enough.
The commission also said the practical difficulties were raised only shortly before the deadline for submitting a witness list, and that the claim that Netanyahu’s lawyers had been unable to communicate with him was inconsistent with other arguments they had made before the panel.
The personal-responsibility stage has already been delayed for more than two years.
The commission sent the warning notices in June 2024 and was ready to provide access to the classified evidence by April 2025.
However, Ya’alon, Cohen, Rothberg and Simchoni were also listed as prosecution witnesses in the parallel criminal case known as Case 3000. High Court proceedings over whether access to the commission’s evidence could affect that trial prevented their lawyers from reviewing the material until February 1.
A separate petition challenging the security arrangements and the two-lawyer limit temporarily froze the commission’s proceedings in April 2025. The High Court rejected it in September.
The state commission’s inquiry is separate from the Case 3000 criminal proceedings.
The criminal case concerns alleged corruption surrounding Israel’s purchase of submarines and naval vessels from German shipbuilder Thyssenkrupp. Several people close to Netanyahu were implicated, but the prime minister was not charged.
The commission is instead examining how political and professional officials made decisions on submarine and warship purchases between 2009 and 2016, as well as Israel’s consent to Germany selling submarines to Egypt.
Its role is to determine what went wrong, recommend reforms and decide whether individual officials bear public responsibility.
Because the personal proceedings remained stalled, the commission published a separate report in January setting out the systemic failures it had already found.
Its central conclusion was that the problems went far beyond any single purchase.
Commission faults governments for failing to set national security priorities
The commission found that successive governments avoided setting clear national-security priorities, leaving the defense establishment to shape the military’s long-term plans without enough direction from the political leadership.
Governments often dealt with individual purchases separately from the broader picture, allowing projects costing billions of shekels to advance without being properly weighed against other security needs.
Cabinet ministers told the commission they had effectively acted as a “rubber stamp” for proposals prepared elsewhere.
The report also found that the NSC had failed in its role of preparing national-security decisions and challenging the defense establishment. At times, it went beyond advising the government and became directly involved in procurement and contacts with commercial parties.
The commission was also sharply critical of Israel’s handling of proposed weapons sales by allied countries to third parties, including Germany’s sale of submarines to Egypt.
It found that the issue was handled without clear responsibility, coordination or proper documentation, allowing Israeli officials to deliver conflicting messages and potentially harm national security.
The report also identified serious problems in the Navy’s procurement culture. It said naval officials coordinated positions with commercial parties, presented decision-makers with manipulative information and advanced partly funded purchases that later created pressure to approve billions of shekels in additional spending.
The commission recommended requiring government approval for the IDF’s multiyear force-building plan, creating a permanent professional body to examine major military purchases and preventing the NSC from directly carrying out procurement decisions.
The November hearings will address the question the January report left open: whether any of the five officials should personally bear responsibility for the failures it found.
In its preliminary warning to Netanyahu, the commission said it was considering finding that his conduct seriously disrupted established decision-making processes and created risks to national security, foreign relations and Israel’s economic interests.
The warning is not a final conclusion, and Netanyahu will be able to challenge it during the proceedings.
Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this report.