Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and the members of the inner security cabinet did not consider taking diplomatic action regarding Gaza in an effort to halt the escalation in the year before the 2014 war with Hamas and its allies in the Gaza Strip broke out, State Comptroller Joseph Shapira wrote in the report released Tuesday on the war. On three separate occasions in the report, Shapira quotes statements made by Ya'alon two days after the outbreak of the war, saying that it's possible that it could have been avoided if Israel had addressed the distress in the strip at the in time.

The 200-page report is being released about a year and a half after the end of the war in August 2014. The report deals both with the decision making process in the security cabinet relating to Gaza before Operation Protective Edge, as the war is officially known in Israel, and at its outset but also with the issue involving dealing with the attack tunnels in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge, as well as preparation for the intelligence, technological and operational response to the this threat in the years prior to the operation. Shapira's report does not deal directly with the conduct of the war itself or its results.

These are the report’s salient points: