Some critical Israeli sites were hit by Iranian ballistic missiles during the war, including the Beersheba Medical Center, the Haifa Bazan Oil Refinery, and the Weizmann Institute of Science.
State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman on Tuesday accused the Ministry of Defense, the IDF and the National Security Council (NSC) of failing to provide physical defenses for critical infrastructure sites.
Some critical Israeli locations were hit by Iranian ballistic missiles during the June war, including the medical center in Beersheba, the Haifa Bazan oil refinery (which suffered damage to pipelines and transmission lines), various important laboratories at Weizmann University in Rehovot, and a number of others.
According to the comptroller, this problem was first reported in 2011 by a division of the ministry and his office issued a detailed report highlighting all the vulnerabilities in 2020, but virtually all efforts so far on this issue have been ignored.
The issue of physical defense is different from air defense such as Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow and Iron Beam. These defenses are designed to prevent an aerial threat from crossing into Israeli airspace or approaching a variety of Israeli installations or residential areas.
A building on the Weizmann Institute of Science campus remains damaged following an Iranian missile attack on Sunday in Rehovot, Israel, June 19, 2025 (Credit: REUTERS/VIOLETA SANTOS MOURA)
Instead, the controller takes various authorities to task for not providing specific physical defenses to specific critical infrastructure facilities should a missile breach air defenses and strike that facility.
Protecting critical sites: Israel has no legal framework
Englman said the issue is vital given that, as strong as Israel’s air defenses are, they are not airtight, and that Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran have been able to hit various critical sites at times in the war, places that had no physical defenses.
According to the controller, there are multiple obstacles in ensuring the defense of these sites.
First, the defense establishment failed to map these sites to have a comprehensive list.
To the extent that some mapping has occurred, all parties know that this process has been insufficient and is not remotely updated.
There is no legal procedure for adding new sites to the list, the watchdog warned.
No law has been passed to create a legal framework for processes to protect these sites and to increase efforts to do so in the political and defense arenas.
Among the various bodies involved in the matter: the Ministry of Defence, the ministry’s Rahel disaster response organization, the IDF, the NSC and the Ministry of Finance, no one has attempted to resolve the disagreements over which body should provide funding for the hugely expensive defense project.
The Jerusalem Post understands that the divergence over who will be the lead funder is one of the sticking points, with several bodies, including private sector companies, likely to be willing to contribute some funding if they are not the lead.
Without lawsuits and funding, there has been little progress on how to provide physical defense. Such decisions are a prerequisite for likely years of planning and construction.
Although the report does not specifically mention the issue, a major challenge is whether all sites are physically feasible to be fully protected.
For example, many of the IDF’s critical functions have moved to underground locations, or at least backup underground locations have been developed, to maintain their operations in the event of a larger air war.
Could all electrical, water, medical and other critical infrastructure really be moved underground, even if there were funding to do so?
How would this affect their operations today?
The Post learned that this might be one of the tough dilemmas, but that there are many other options to make it more difficult to hit or even detect Israeli critical infrastructure without going underground.
Englman also made some specific allegations. He said the Department of Defense has been playing catch-up with the issue, shifting responsibility from one division to another, apparently looking for a way to avoid having to deal with the problem head-on.
Additionally, the comptroller criticized the ministry for not addressing the issue even once the war began and even once the home front was subjected to massive ballistic missile barrages.
In fact, the report said the ministry and the CNVM had only made progress on one of the five major deficiencies, at least starting the work of a committee to delve into the issue.
Furthermore, the report noted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally intervened on the issue in November 2023, ordering the CNS to produce results.
However, the NSC began pressing the Ministry of Defense for specific progress only in June 2024, and then the ministry ignored the NSC’s July 2024 deadline for providing a substantial update.
It was only in December 2024, just as then-Defense Ministry Director General Eyal Zamir was about to leave his post and become the next head of the IDF, that Zamir ordered his subordinates in the ministry to make further progress on the matter.
The report also periodically makes vague references to other security bodies that have flagged vulnerabilities and must assist in the process.
The activities of Shin Bet and the Israel Atomic Energy Agency are often kept classified.
Smoke rises from Soroka Medical Center, the city’s general hospital, following an Iranian missile strike on Israel, in Beersheba, Israel, June 19, 2025 (Credit: REUTERS/AMIR COHEN)
Israel’s defense ministers have done little to keep the sites safe
Meanwhile, the report does not appear to indicate that any of the many defense ministers in 2020 have attempted to make any progress on the issue.
Englman specifically said that Defense Minister Israel Katz and Zamir, as the current head of the IDF, have primary responsibility for resolving the issue.
More specifically, the report said Katz must designate leadership on various aspects of the problem, whether it’s funding, mapping the sites, or implementing new physical defenses at the sites.
The controller also said that the heads of the CNVM and the IDF must present concrete proposals to help the prime minister move forward on the issues in which he must be personally involved.
Englman also said Netanyahu should take a more active role on the issue rather than waiting for other officials to come to him with proposals.