Steinitz warned of ground invasion from Gaza; security system presented 'comprehensive response'

At a cabinet meeting on March 10, 2016, then-Energy and Infrastructure Minister Yuval Steinitz warned of a ground invasion from Gaza and said 'on the ground surface there is no barrier preventing this,' and IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot replied 'but there is,' according to quotes the prime minister approved for publication from the stenography in response to the state comptroller.

The statements appear in the document 'Prime Minister's Response to State Comptroller Questions,' a 55-page classified document dated December 2025. According to the document, the prime minister presented it to the state comptroller and staff in his office on December 25, 2025, and it was released to the public on February 5, 2026. This is the prime minister's own response letter. Discussion excerpts are marked as 'quotes the prime minister approved for publication from the stenography,' and portions not approved for publication are redacted.

On page 21 are excerpts from the cabinet discussion on the underground barrier construction on March 10, 2016. Then-Energy and Infrastructure Minister Yuval Steinitz said 'we are very focused in recent years on the tunnel threat,' and 'we are ignoring a much greater danger.' He warned: 'We are not focusing on the possibility that definitely exists, of a ground invasion into our territory,' and added 'such an invasion is possible with relatively simple means and could even be on wider scales.' He later said: 'On the ground surface there is no barrier preventing this.'

To Steinitz's claim there is no barrier, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot replied in two words: 'but there is.' Steinitz returned and asked: 'Is such a ground invasion possible, what is the solution?' Later he said that 'even this overhead fence, in my assessment, will not be strong enough to prevent it from being destroyed by heavy trucks or by a large quantity of explosives and destroyed at several simultaneous locations.'

Then-Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said that 'there are tanks around the perimeter, there are forces, there is infrastructure, there is everything,' and noted they would establish a concrete wall. Later in the discussion, after a redacted section, Eisenkot said: 'So you should know there is an eight-meter steel barrier, you have seen it,' and described 'a steel barrier that does not allow anti-tank fire through it.' According to him, the solution includes both a concrete wall and a steel barrier that 'is very hard to penetrate and very hard to cross.' He also said: 'Therefore it is correct to manage risks and not spend billions to build a barrier there,' and added: 'I think the response given over the years is a good response.'

In another discussion, at a Gaza situation assessment on September 11, 2016, Eisenkot said: 'We have overwhelming superiority over Hamas, so I suggest we not alarm ourselves.' He also said that 'the State of Israel has a magnificent intelligence system,' and that 'the expectation from military intelligence and the expectation from Shin Bet is to provide warning.' The statements appear on page 8 of the document, also from quotes the prime minister approved for publication from the official stenography, and the document does not include what preceded the excerpt.

The prime minister's response concludes: 'The security system clarified to the prime minister that the existing overhead barrier in Gaza, combined with the spatial deployment of forces, provides a comprehensive response to the threat of a ground invasion' (page 21). On page 33 it states that intelligence bodies treated the threat of invasion by Hamas 'as a marginal element in Hamas's attack scenario,' and determined that Hamas would be able to implement it 'only with a limited number of up to two platoons.' Commentator Amnon Lord wrote in Israel Hayom that Steinitz stood out among the few 'who analyzed the weaknesses in the IDF's perception' under the leadership of Ya'alon, Gantz and Eisenkot. Steinitz himself told Israel Hayom in April 2025 that 'in the IDF, and not only in it, there is a conspiracy as if you can rely on deterrence,' but acknowledged in that same interview that 'in recent years I myself have started to doubt whether it will really happen.'

On October 7, 2021, 'exactly two years before the invasion,' according to the response (page 19), Gaza Division distributed a document called 'Iron Wall' on 'the concept of routine defense in the Gaza Strip.' According to quotes the prime minister approved for publication from the document (page 20), it stated that 'over more than four years, not a single infiltrator crossed the Gaza Strip border without the system alerting to it,' and that 'the significant barrier that was built and the challenge it presents to infiltration attempts into Israel, also further impede the realization of the invasion operation in routine and reduce its likelihood.' Two months later, on December 7, 2021, the Defense Ministry reported completion of the Gaza border barrier, which cost approximately 3.5 billion shekels and includes a concrete wall more than six meters high.

According to a Southern Command investigation, as reported by Israel Hayom in February 2025, on the morning of October 7, 2023, at 6:29 a.m., Hamas launched a combined attack that included 'an engineering effort to breach the barrier across the sector.' According to that same report, the ground attack 'began simultaneously' and 114 passages were breached in the fence. According to Walla, '114 passages, 77 breaches and 37 gates were opened using explosive charges and pushing with bulldozers.' At 7:58, the commander of Hamas's military wing, Muhammad Deif, called: 'Go out and storm into Israel, there is no fence at the border.'

According to the investigation, as reported on ynet, the IDF's most severe scenario assumed 'infiltration of approximately 70 militants from four to eight locations.' In reality, already in the first wave 1,175 militants infiltrated Israel, against only 671 fighters, and in total, by estimates, at least 5,000 to 5,600 militants infiltrated that day. More than seven and a half years earlier, Steinitz had assessed in the cabinet that 'even this overhead fence' would not be strong enough to prevent 'destroying it at several simultaneous locations.' The reports on the investigation do not indicate when the scenario assumption was determined.

Eisenkot, currently chairman of the Yashar party, responded on X to the document on the day of its release: 'Manipulations, distortions and selective quotes from previous years do not change the one truth.' In a letter to the state comptroller the next day, he claimed, according to Israel Hayom, that the prime minister presented things in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee built 'from selective partial quotes of senior security system members (myself among them) from different points in time and without context,' and wrote that the comptroller 'must demand all protocols and allow all involved and mentioned to review them.' To Netanyahu's claim in that classified discussion that Eisenkot said as chief of staff that the barrier is 'a barrier in form,' Eisenkot replied, according to i24NEWS: 'The fence was erected after I ended my position,' and referred to Netanyahu's book, in which, according to him, it is written 'how the fence was erected thanks to him and against the position of the chief of staff.' Eisenkot ended his service as chief of staff on January 15, 2019, and construction of the overhead barrier on the Gaza border, which includes the concrete wall he presented in the cabinet in 2016 as part of the solution, began in February 2019.