British army incompetence was the reason for a botched Second World War raid in which 23 Jewish commandos and a British officer died, according to the former head of an IDF unit responsible for missing soldiers.

Former commander Nir Arieli told packed auditorium in the Palmach museum in Tel Aviv earlier this month that the plan to destroy an oil refinery in Vichy-controlled Tripoli in Lebanon was full of errors.

The soldiers who climbed into a boat and set sail from Haifa on the morning of May 18, 1941 were never heard from again.

Over 70 years of speculation followed. Streets have been named after the men, but still no one knows exactly what happened to them.

Now the Palmach museum has offered a definitive report on the subject. According to Dr Moshe Amioz, a military scholar, and Mr Arieli, the operation should never have gone ahead.

Dr Amioz argued that the mission was pointless because "the oil refinery was no longer connected to the oil pipeline from Iraq, which the British had closed when France became an ally of Germany". Rear admiral (ret) Nir Maor argued that the boat was not even capable of taking the commandos to their target in the first place.