Civilian authorities were insufficiently prepared to protect residents, maintain basic services, and deliver timely relief when they were met with the October 7 attack and the ensuing war with Hamas and Hezbollah, according to a report published on Tuesday by State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman.
The report – the ninth in a series of audits on the Israel-Hamas War – examined the conduct of government bodies under emergency conditions.
It focused on the civilian front, painting a picture of systemic gaps in home front protection, education continuity, and economic compensation. Many of the issues it found predated the war but were sharply exposed by it.
Englman concluded that in several key areas, the state failed to translate years of warnings into actionable readiness, leaving local authorities and citizens to improvise during a national emergency.
The most urgent failures identified relate to physical protection against rocket and missile fire. As of January 2025, roughly one-third of Israel’s population – approximately 3.2 million people – lacked access to standard protective spaces, including tens of thousands of residents in communities near Israel’s northern border, the audit found.
According to the report, the Home Front Command froze the second phase of a nationwide municipal protection program several years ago without establishing an alternative framework. This left local authorities without guidance or approved plans. In many municipalities reviewed by the state comptroller, officials said they were unaware that the program had been halted at all.
The audit found widespread deficiencies in the mapping of protection gaps, maintenance of public shelters, and oversight by central authorities. More than 11% of public shelters nationwide were deemed unfit for use, and oversight inspections by both local authorities and the Home Front Command were found to be sporadic or nonexistent in the years preceding the war.
Local governments, particularly in peripheral and minority communities, were often left to shoulder responsibility without adequate budgets, data, or enforcement mechanisms.
In the Bedouin communities of the Negev, where tens of thousands live in unregulated structures, no protection existed at all before the war, and only limited temporary solutions were introduced after fighting began.
The comptroller concluded that the absence of a binding, funded national protection plan undermined the state’s ability to ensure civilian safety and maintain functional continuity during sustained missile fire.
IDF: Home Front Command 'learning and improving' to fortify defenses
In response to the findings, the IDF said that the Home Front Command “operates continuously to strengthen the protective measures available to Israel’s civilian population, while learning and improving in order to reinforce home front defense and maintain civilian resilience.”
According to the IDF, responsibility for protection generally lies with the property owner, while oversight, maintenance, and enforcement of public shelters fall under the authority of local authorities. The Home Front Command, the IDF said, has no legal authority to handle the maintenance of private shelters.
The IDF added that protection plans in each municipality are determined by the local authority, and that the Home Front Command provides professional guidance and assistance to municipalities that choose to adopt such plans, including support from relevant regional commands.
Inspections of public shelters are also conducted by the Home Front Command, and it updates local authorities on its findings to improve protection and ensure compliance with the law, it said.
The education system, the report found, was similarly unprepared for prolonged emergency conditions. Despite lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Education Ministry had not completed a national, multiyear strategy for digital learning, leaving schools without adequate infrastructure for remote instruction once physical attendance became unsafe.
As a result, learning continuity varied widely between municipalities, with prolonged closures and reduced in-person attendance in areas lacking protected spaces.
Nearly 40% of sampled schools were unable to move all students to protected areas within the allotted warning time, while more than 466,000 students were attending schools without adequate protection as late as March 2024.
In several municipalities, especially those near active fronts, students attended school only part-time for weeks or months, and some institutions remained closed entirely. The comptroller found that deficiencies in shelter maintenance, emergency drills, and data collection further compounded the disruption.
The report warned that failing to ensure both physical protection and digital readiness undermines not only educational continuity but also children’s mental resilience during extended emergencies.
In its response to the comptroller’s education findings, the IDF said that the Home Front Command is the body authorized to determine civil defense policy and issue life-saving instructions to the public during a declared state of emergency on the home front or during an attack.
This authority, the military noted, includes the power to restrict or prohibit educational activity in accordance with updated operational assessments conducted from time to time.
State unable to provide adequate financial compensation
The review also highlighted major failures in the state’s compensation mechanisms for businesses and individuals affected by the war. According to the comptroller, the Finance Ministry and the Tax Authority failed to establish permanent statutory criteria for indirect damage compensation, relying instead on ad hoc arrangements that delayed payments and created uncertainty.
In some cases, compensation payments took up to three months to reach claimants, placing severe strain on small businesses’ ability to survive. Appeal processes were even slower: the average time to resolve objections was more than two years.
The report further found that compensation funds were paid out in the billions of shekels without proper eligibility checks, with significant sums still uncollected when the audit concluded. At the same time, no centralized mechanism existed to pool and coordinate reconstruction budgets, complicating recovery efforts in northern and southern communities.
Englman noted that local authorities, particularly in evacuated or heavily affected areas, struggled to manage rehabilitation efforts amid fragmented funding streams and unclear governmental leadership.
The comptroller called for a series of structural reforms. Chief among them was the establishment of fully funded, multiyear national programs for home front protection, with clear timelines, binding oversight, and accountability mechanisms.
Englman further urged the government to mandate comprehensive data collection on protection gaps, enforce regular shelter inspections, and ensure equitable allocation of resources across regions and population groups.
Regarding education, the audit recommended accelerating the rollout of a national digital learning strategy and closing protection gaps in schools and kindergartens as a matter of urgency.
On compensation, the comptroller called for permanent legislation to define eligibility and calculation methods, streamline appeals processes, and improve enforcement to prevent improper payouts while ensuring timely relief for those entitled to it.
The report was published amid an ongoing institutional and legal confrontation over the scope of wartime accountability. While the State Comptroller’s Office initially announced broad audits into both civilian and security failures surrounding October 7, the High Court of Justice issued interim orders last week blocking investigations into several core issues, citing concerns about overlap with potential future inquiries.
The court has emphasized that ultimate responsibility for examining the causes of the October 7 disaster lies with a state commission of inquiry – a body the government has so far declined to establish.
In response, the comptroller has opted to publish completed civilian audits as they are finalized, rather than wait for the resolutions of the legal and political disputes. Englman has stressed that the findings underscore the critical importance of independent oversight, particularly during prolonged emergencies.