Israeli PM Blames Army For Lebanon Failure
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told an investigative panel that the Israeli military "seriously let itself down" in last summer's war in Lebanon, according to censored minutes of his testimony released on Thursday.
But Olmert tried to deflect the commission's suggestions that he acted rashly and on the basis of sketchy information.
Olmert told a government commission that there was no other option but to strike at Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon immediately after they kidnapped two Israeli soldiers last year, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger. He said he knew Hezbollah would respond with rocket attacks, but he had two options: to strike decisively or do nothing.
The 89 pages of testimony were released 10 days after the commission issued a damning appraisal of his handling of the initial stage of the war. The especially harsh censure of Olmert has prompted renewed calls for his resignation and cast a cloud over his political future.
In other developments:
Although Olmert has survived the initial uproar over the report, it is not clear whether he can keep his coalition together under his leadership. A final report on the 34-day war is due out in the summer.
The war started July 12 when Hezbollah guerrillas carried out a July 12 cross-border raid in which three soldiers were killed and two were captured.
The Israeli public backed Olmert throughout the war, but the support broke down after he failed to achieve his two declared aims — recovering the two soldiers and crushing Hezbollah, which in the course of the war bombarded Israel with nearly 4,000 rockets.
The minutes of Olmert's appearance before the war probe panel — censored by the military on security grounds — are studded with panel members' suggestions that Olmert took decisions without doing enough to explore alternatives or seek information beyond what the military told him.
Asked whether he displayed any skepticism about what the military told him, Olmert didn't reply directly with any examples of how he might have disputed that information. Instead, he told the commission's five members that in his position, he had to "apply another perspective that they (military commanders) don't have and can't have."
At the end of his testimony, Olmert acknowledged making mistakes of his own, saying, for example, that he might have met more often with senior Cabinet ministers to consult with them on diplomacy.
Olmert told the panel he was convinced Hezbollah would send rockets thudding into Israel's northern communities — as it did — and that he had two options: do nothing or do something from the very first minute. "I don't think there was any option but to act from the very first," he told the commission.
When weighing his options, Olmert said, "In my mind's eye, I saw the new Lebanese morass closing in on us like the old one did" — a reference to Israel's 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon to eject Palestinian militants. That led to an 18-year military occupation of a strip of southern Lebanon.
While effusively praising the fighting forces as "exceptional," Olmert he said the military command "seriously let itself down" during the war.
"Something in the concept of how they operated the forces, something in the concept of their control over the forces, something wasn't what we expected, unfortunately, and that no doubt led to the gap between our abilities and what we achieved in practice."
Asked to address the breakdown of security on the border with Lebanon in July, Olmert acknowledged that senior security officials told him about a lack of military exercises in the area. But he said he "didn't really pay much attention" because the defense establishment "always" comes to budget deliberations saying it doesn't have enough money.
Olmert's office, commenting on the testimony, defended his wartime actions as "the necessary conclusion from a process of planning and consultation that Olmert has carried out" since taking over as prime minister in January 2006, following Ariel Sharon's incapacitating stroke.
Addressing commentators' criticisms that Olmert was trying to shift the blame to the army, the statement said, "the prime minister didn't fob off responsibility onto anyone or accuse anyone. ... At the same time, Olmert doesn't conceal there were failures; the military says that, too."
Meanwhile, Livni held talks Thursday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the first high-level discussion between Israel and the Arab world on an Arab initiative calling for an exchange of land for peace.
Israel and the United States have called the Arab initiative a possible basis for reviving the Arab-Israeli peace process. But Israel has expressed reservations over many of its provisions, including the initiative's call for a solution to the issue of Palestinian refugees.
Arab nations first launched the Saudi-led initiative in 2002 — meeting an outright Israeli rejection — then revived it at a summit in Riyadh in March. The Arab League has designated Egypt and Jordan to take the lead in discussions with Israel to promote the plan.
Olmert visits Jordan on Tuesday to meet with King Abdullah II in the ancient city of Petra on the sidelines of an annual Jordanian conference for Nobel laureates.
Chief Jordanian government spokesman Nasser Judeh had said Abdullah would "focus on the Arab peace plan and ways to move the peace process forward."
"The Arab peace initiative is a historic chance and if we don't move, there would be nothing to negotiate on," King Abdullah of Jordan was quoted as saying in an interview published Thursday in the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram.