State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss, in an especially harsh report on the state of the home front and its functioning prior to and during the Second Lebanon War, on Tuesday said the authorities had displayed an "eclipse of reason."

In an unusual move, the report specifically named current and former senior officials, blaming them for severe failures in the handling of the home front in wartime.

The Prime Minister's Office and senior IDF officials disagreed with the comptroller's conclusions, and accused him of adding irrelevant criticism to his report.

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The 582-page report is the most comprehensive ever published by the State Comptroller's Office, and apparently the harshest.

The comptroller states in the report that "Israel's administrations - the political and executive echelons - have not carried out their duties regarding the safeguarding of the home front for many years, and have failed to prepare a comprehensive and operative assessment for the conduct of the home front in the event of an emergency."

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, former defense minister Amir Peretz, former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Dan Halutz and commander of the IDF Home Front Command Yitzhak Gershon were all accused of severe failures in their respective decision-making processes, assessments of the situation, and carrying out the various aspects of safeguarding the home front during the war.

The report blames the "captains of the state" for investing most of their energies in the fighting, and neglecting the home front which was "vulnerable to a large-scale attack since the first days of the war." The report added that these leaders failed to prepare most of the home front for a state of emergency.

"These are severe failures that have lasted for many years and have eroded the home front's ability to safeguard the civilian population during war."

The report says that when the war broke out, various professional bodies presented the government with assessments of the situation and estimates of the scope of the damage the war would incur.

These assessments included a detailed description of the home front's preparation for rocket and missile attacks. But, the report says, the government did not discuss these assessments until July 30, the 19th day of the war.

The assessments did not include preparation for significant issues such as the state of bomb shelters and protection of homes against missiles.

No updates on Hezbollah weapons
Lindenstrauss found severe failures in the conduct of the police during the war, which placed the lives of police sappers and Israeli citizens in danger. Though the police were responsible for the citizens in the home front, the organization had outdated information regarding the types of weapons Hezbollah may use.

In an unusual move, Israel Police took upon itself the responsibility of handling the home front when the war began. According to the law, this is something that falls under the control of the IDF's Home Front Command. Nevertheless, the government authorized the police to take over these duties.

The comptroller maintained in the report that the police "functioned well" and were highly motivated.

But he criticized the government ministers, including Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, for failing to check in advance whether or not the police were capable of carrying out these duties.

The job of safeguarding the home front included many complex tasks which the Israel Police had never before attempted, the report says, and the police also lacked the authority and resources to carry out these tasks.

The comptroller also found a severe failure in the transfer of information between the military intelligence and the police regarding the rocket missiles fired by Hezbollah.

"Only several days after the beginning of the war, when the police had a critical need for highly classified information, did the military intelligence department organize a regulated channel through which specific information could be transferred to the police," the report reads.

The establishment of such a channel was initiated by the police's intelligence department, not the IDF, the comptroller adds.

It also emerged that the IDF attempted to exclude the police from use of an alert system designed to warn against rocket strikes before the Home Front Command's sirens go off.

During the first days of the war, the police's northern district was given access to this system. However, during the course of the war, the Home Front Command disconnected the police from the system. The police asked to be reconnected, saying the system could save police officers' as well as citizens' lives, but the request was ignored.

The comptroller criticized Dichter and the government for authorizing the transfer of responsibility over the home front from the Home Front Command to the police.

"It ends up that a decision with strategic implications for the police and the home front, which made the police the main authority responsible for the home front, was taken essentially without a comprehensive discussion of the matter among all the responsible parties and without examining its systematic implications, including dangers posed to the home front population," the report concludes.

It says that there had been no discussion over the ability of the police to perform the task of enforcing the law and keeping order and maintaining public security throughout the country.

Home Front Command conflicting assessments
The special report criticized the Israel Defense Forces Home Front Command for failing to safeguard the public in the event of a possible rocket strike on a site containing high concentrations of dangerous chemicals.

The Home Front Command did not coordinate its efforts on this issue with the Environment Ministry, who operated separately in preparation for the same possible threat, also with little success.

The report blames most of the failure to protect against dangerous chemicals on the Home Front Command, saying it failed to inspect factories which handle dangerous chemicals, and was unable to enforce its instructions at such factories during the war.

The report also criticizes the fact that since the war ended last August, the Home Front Command has yet to complete the safeguarding of the 458 facilities containing significant amounts of dangerous chemicals.

According to the report, the Home Front Command presented to the government an overly optimistic assessment of the potential dangers posed by the possible spread of dangerous chemicals. The IDF assessment did not place emphasis on this danger despite the fact that most chemical storage facilities were unprotected against missile attacks.

The Home Front Command and the Environment Ministry, the report continues, gave conflicting instructions during the war regarding the breadth of the threat and the safety precautions that must be taken. These contradictions damaged both bodies' credibility, confused the owners of the chemicals and compelled some of them to threaten the state with lawsuits.

During the war, the Home Front Command instructed several factories to minimize the use of dangerous chemicals. The factories in turn demanded compensation for the financial losses this would entail. The report concludes that for this reason, the IDF failed to enforce its instructions and basically allowed the factories to ignore the IDF's directions.

The report also criticizes the fact that the IDF failed to instruct the chemical factories in close proximity to shopping malls, office buildings and public places to take extra precautions, endangering countless lives.

The comptroller stated that the IDF began to safeguard the factories only nine days after the war had begun.

Evacuating civilian population
According to the comptroller's report, the government did not hold hearings on the matter of evacuating civilians from the north of the country, even while there was a mass southward migration of Israelis in response to Hezbollah attacks on the north.

The report holds that it would have been appropriate for the government to hold meetings on the matter, something that then-defense minister Amir Peretz refused to do.

The report determines that "the programs for evacuating civilians were insufficient to handle the wide range of scenarios" in the north during the war, and that "a number of the facilities intended for the absorption of evacuees were located in areas subject to IDF or Hezbollah bombardment, and a number were not available at all."

According to the comptroller's office, during the first week of the war, the majority of evacuees should have been able to entrust their evacuation to local authorities, under an official evacuation plan prepared ahead of time.

Nonetheless, after the war broke out, official plans to evacuate civilians were not carried out and the government did not make decisions on the matter of evacuation.

In response, the Prime Minister's Office stated that the prime minister did not think the issue was sufficient enough to warrant a special government hearing, adding that "The prime minister was of the opinion that evacuating hundreds of thousands of residents of the north would have a severely negative impact."

This conduct, Lindenstauss concluded, was characteristic of many government offices and public bodies. "They did not take initiatives nor did they use their authority to assist the population," the report concluded. "This conduct created a void which left the inhabitants of northern Israel vulnerable and defenseless?the failures are a total eclipse of reason."

The report said "the home front was not sufficiently prepared for war, notwithstanding the fact that since at least 1991 (The First Gulf War) it has been known to be exposed to damage."

Lindenstauss listed three main areas of failure. In the legal field, that current law does not give a fitting solution to preparing the home front for and its treatment during times of crisis. In the field of preparedness, there was no comprehensive and ordered discussion of arrangements for emergency situations. In the operational field, governmental departments, local authorities and other institutions - including the Home Front Command and the government body for emergency management - did not fulfill tasks they were given.

Local authorities and state institutions
Of local authorities in the North, the report states most had no programs or infrastructures in place for emergency situations. It said problems at this level were particularly striking in Arab local authorities.

The comptroller ruled bomb shelters for northern residents were not appropriate to be stayed in for extended periods of time. A deep gap existed, Lindenstrauss wrote, between the necessary and the existent in the field of protection and shelter; and for the general population there was no real protection at all during missile attacks.

Again, the Arab sector in particular had insufficient bomb shelters and means of protection for wartime.

Both Jewish and Arab local authorities did not maintain existing public shelters they were responsible for, and in some cases did not build a correct amount of shelters for the population. The Home Front Command did not supervise the shelters. Successive tax cuts over the years severely damaged the home front's preparedness for emergencies.

The report harshly criticizes state institutions' functioning during the war. Many office-holders did not use their authority, or only used it in part or mistakenly. Government ministers and the defense establishment did not translate the prime minister's order of 12 July "to prepare for a new reality in the home front" to necessary steps.

While a military operation against Hezbollah was managed at the frontline, its implications for the home front did not lead the state and army did not act. "The home front turned into the frontline," the comptroller. This requires immediate and fittingly serious attention ? but none has been given.

For Lindenstrauss, treatment by Olmert, ministers, public bodies responsible for problems revealed during the war was in most cases "knee-jerk, partial and inappropriate ? and often very late."

The government, the Defense Ministry and the IDF did not implement in the early stages of the conflict contingency plans they had, which were able to resolve a large amount of the problems. The comptroller blasted the Home Front Command's functioning during the war. The following are its fundamental conclusions.