Should a state commission of inquiry be appointed? Obviously. This is so obvious and expected in a country where decisions are made in a matter-of-fact manner and with responsible judgment. This is not obvious in our midst. For everything here is no longer natural, predictable and right, in terms that were once the norm by which we lived and conducted our affairs. Therefore, it is very possible that this question will become the main topic of debate in the coming days. In the end, the shock, trauma and pain of so many will be stronger than the manipulations and tactics of the prime minister and the relevant ministers. The committee will be established. Its powers, the scope of its investigation and the object of its investigation will be subject to controversy, defamation and maneuvering – with the aim of conducting an investigation as long as it is possible to extract from it all the intended recipients of harsh criticism for their direct or indirect responsibility for the great disaster.
The truth is that the commission of inquiry is the least significant detail in trying to draw lessons from this disaster. The committee will examine the preparations and the warnings issued before the event, namely Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis’s warning about the need to limit the number of participants and keep distance because of the dangers of coronavirus. The police are likely to be at the center of the investigation: its preparations, assessments, the actual management of the incident, what the district commander knew, what he presented to the commissioner, what was presented to the public security minister.
The officials in the Religious Services Ministry – who are responsible for holy places – will surely also be required to give explanations. Each of the officials who will be examined and investigated will make their explanations, throw accusations at others and abdicate what was their responsibility and authority. Slowly, as things happen with us, we will return to our other agendas, and when the day comes, another year, maybe more, there will be conclusions, there will be those held responsible and we will go back to making all the mistakes we made in the past until the next disaster.
Public Security Minister Amir Ohana has declared himself responsible, but not guilty. Had Ohana been the public security minister of the citizens of Israel, it would have made sense to argue with his statement. But he is not. We all know. Ohana is the prime minister’s public security minister. Whoever appointed him to his post did not seriously consider that Ohana would fulfill the mission derived from the responsibility placed on him. The prime minister appointed him to protect the prime minister, to ensure that the police do not bother the royal family and to avoid as many possible investigations that could embarrass the prime minister. This is what Ohana was asked to do, and this is what he did.
From this it is clear that Ohana will seek to blame his subordinates in the police, the officials in the Religious Services Ministry who are in charge of the holy places, the engineers who gave or did not give such or other opinions. He may seek to place the blame on the State Attorney’s Office, the attorney-general and perhaps on the High Court judges. Why did they not decide in advance what was needed to ban the event, why did they not warn about what seemed obvious and was in their power to prevent?
When the investigation process is completed, those responsible will be identified. No one will be held criminally liable. Many will bear public, administrative and technical responsibility. Bleachers that were not strong enough, barricades placed too close to where people crowded, an inability to block the stampede and crowding of all the thousands who arrived due to a combination of unpredictable circumstances. Slowly, the echoes of the first shock that shook the entire country will dissipate and the issue will fall off the agenda.
The Meron disaster is not the last. In a little while, the terrorist incidents will increase and they will also cause quite a few deaths and injuries. The first buds of the escalation of terrorism are already apparent. It doesn’t take much to light a big fire – another provocation by the hilltop youth, another burning of an olive tree or a lack of consideration for Muslims celebrating Ramadan and especially the continued closing of the eyes of law enforcement officials from the provocations of the hilltop youth and their partners – and everything will break out and we will lose control.
Road accidents have already led to a particularly large number of dead and injured in recent weeks. At the current rate, we may face a large number of casualties, tremendous damage to civilians and the state economy. Does anyone care? Truthfully, there is no governmental system, in the civil, economic and even police spheres, that currently manages even the minimum reasonable format expected of it.
WHILE WE are busy with the disaster in Meron, we hardly noticed the terrible fire in the Carmel Forest that claimed the lives of 44 people, most of them brave firefighters who were exposed to the fire without being prepared and equipped to deal with it and burned to death. Is someone mentioning the 170,000 citizens who were evicted from their homes and were left homeless? Is anyone talking about the millions of trees that perished in the 2010 disaster?
And we still have not done the self examination on the thousands of dead from the coronavirus. How were the decisions made? How was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu allowed to manage this agonizing crisis when what is in front of his eyes, according to the testimony of many of the people from the internal chambers where the decisions were made, was his family’s private interests and not the right response to the pandemic that killed more than 6,000 citizens?
The classic model of our conduct is failures, political considerations and personal accounts – which degenerate into a mass terrorist attack, a fire, the Meron disaster or the coronavirus failure, or many mass road accidents and deaths, and then a sort of trick, a magic act of the prime minister, with some super tanker in the sky or vaccines that come after 6,000 civilians die. What really matters? What did we do to prevent the disaster and the fires and the dead?
I do not recommend giving up the commission of inquiry that needs to be set up. It will eventually arise. What will remain of the investigation, what will be learned from its conclusions and what will we understand from its findings? Very little. Because we always know better how to avoid the consequences of failures, negligence, the “it will be okay” when we are not ok than to prevent these disasters before they occur.
In the end, all the lengthy discussions, the sublime essays and the moving eulogies cannot obscure the simple fact: we have no government, we have no leadership. We have someone who holds the title of prime minister, but in practice he is at best a head of family.
That’s it – now is the time to put an end to his service. It should have happened a long time ago. It must happen now.