Israel’s State Comptroller published a damning report finding that the government and emergency authorities failed systematically in the mass evacuation of more than 200,000 civilians in the immediate aftermath of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. The report — by Comptroller Matanyahu Englman on civilian aspects of the post-October 7 period — described “total disorder” and a “systemic failure,” marked by late evacuations, shirked responsibility, and the complete absence of an approved, up-to-date evacuation protocol. As Englman put it, “The heroism of individuals only further underscored the systemic failures.”
The scale of unpreparedness was striking. As of October 7, Israel had zero approved national operational evacuation plans and had conducted no emergency drills for a mass civilian displacement scenario anywhere near the scale of what occurred. The joint “Safe Distance” evacuation plan — intended to provide up to 21 days of temporary housing for roughly 45,000 residents living within four kilometers of the Gaza border and five kilometers of the Lebanese border — had been approved at the deputy ministerial level in 2021 but was never ratified by government ministries or the security cabinet, leaving it in draft form when war broke out. Critically, neither the national nor the IDF versions of the plan included any provision for evacuating nearby cities such as Kiryat Shmona or Sderot.
The delays were stark. In Kibbutz Nahal Oz, the evacuation began 14 hours after the Hamas invasion and was not completed until 24 hours after the attack started. Kibbutz Kfar Aza took 36 hours to evacuate. In some cases, municipalities were unable to coordinate with the IDF at all during active evacuation operations, forcing residents to leave under fire without structured assistance. In the north, some 10,000 residents of Kiryat Shmona — a city just one kilometer from the Lebanese border — evacuated independently before any formal government decision was issued, which came only on October 18, ten days after Hezbollah began attacking.
The absorption of evacuees was equally chaotic. Evacuees from Kiryat Shmona alone were dispersed across approximately 300 separate hospitality facilities nationwide, which the Comptroller said caused “unnecessary suffering” and uncertainty. The government’s decision to house evacuees primarily in hotels rather than public facilities such as schools and community centers — as envisioned under the 2012 framework — meant that only 41 of the 317 facilities ultimately used had been designated in advance as official housing sites. Even six months into the conflict, updated location information had been collected on only about 50% of evacuees, as no centralized digital tracking system existed.
The root cause was institutional failure years in the making. A 2012 government decision had established a national evacuation framework, but an updated version drafted in 2022 was never approved due to a funding dispute. When war broke out, the response fell back entirely on improvised ministerial decisions. The report also found that more than 11 percent of public shelters nationwide were deemed unfit for use, and that oversight inspections by both local authorities and the Home Front Command had been sporadic or nonexistent in the years before the war. The Home Front Command had also frozen a nationwide municipal protection program years earlier without establishing any alternative framework, leaving local authorities without guidance — and, in many cases, without even knowing the program had been halted.
The failures extended beyond evacuation. A separate Comptroller report found that Israel had operated for more than seven decades without a formally approved national security doctrine, leaving the IDF and other agencies to plan force structure and operations largely based on their own internal assessments rather than clear political direction. Successive prime ministers and security cabinets had never ratified a written national security concept. The Comptroller called on the government to immediately initiate a process to formulate and publish one, and in June 2025, the Knesset passed bipartisan legislation requiring the next government to approve a national security strategy within five months of its formation.
Government ministries pushed back on the evacuation findings. The Defense Ministry said the National Emergency Authority had “acted and continues to act with an expansive approach since the beginning of the war,” describing the relocation of approximately 124,000 evacuees to hotels across the country as an unprecedented achievement carried out under complex circumstances. The IDF said the Home Front Command deployed roughly 1,000 soldiers and commanders to assist authorities and operated in accordance with approved plans. The Comptroller’s report concluded, however, that the October 7 attacks had exposed fundamental gaps in emergency preparedness and the absence of any coordinating authority with binding powers over the civilian home front — and that the heroism of individuals on that day had masked, rather than remedied, a deep structural collapse.
Sources: “Government Management of the Civil Domain During the Swords of Iron War,” Israel State Comptroller, (September 2025).
“State Comptroller Englman on the Absence of a National Security Concept: “A Multi-Year Failure,”” Israel State Comptroller, (November 11, 2025).
Stav Levaton, “Comptroller blames Israel’s October 7 failures on lack of national security policy,” Times of Israel, (November 11, 2025).
Yaron Drukerman, “Israel faces alarming security failures across all national infrastructure, state comptroller warns,” Ynet, (February 12, 2025).
Sarah Ben-Nun, “Israel unprepared for war: One-third of population lacks shelter access, state audit reveals,” Jerusalem Post, (January 6, 2026).
Jacob Jaffa, “Israel did not have up-to-date evacuation plan on October 7, state comptroller finds,” Jewish Chronicle, (February 23, 2026).
Stav Levaton, “‘Total disorder’: Comptroller accuses government, IDF of ‘systemic failure’ in post-Oct. 7 evacuations,” Times of Israel, (February 24, 2026).
Sarah Ben-Nun, “Gov’t, IDF had no approved mass civilian evacuation plan pre-Oct. 7, comptroller report finds,” Jerusalem Post, (February 24, 2026).