Middle East
ANALYSIS
Photo by Abir Sultan/IDF
The
Fallout
With appointment of a
commission, the war after the
war is now in full swing.
The IDF chief of staff, Dan Halutz, right, reviews troop advances in southern Lebanon on Aug. 12.
Leslie Susser
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Jerusalem
M
ore than a month
after the guns fell
silent, the Israeli gov-
ernment has finally approved a
commission of inquiry into the
Lebanon war, and the war of the
generals is heating up.
With careers on the line, more
and more politicians and Israel
Defense Force commanders are
going public and blaming each
other for the war's failures and
shortcomings. The public mood
and the commission's findings
could have major consequences
for Israel's military and political
leadership.
Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, who com-
manded the key northern front
during the war, has tendered his
resignation and Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister
Amir Peretz and IDF Chief of
Staff Dan Halutz are under pres-
sure to follow suit.
Headed by retired Israel
Supreme Court Justice Eliyahu
Winograd, the investigative
panel will have all the powers of
a full-fledged state commission
of inquiry — with one crucial
difference: The members of the
Winograd panel were appointed
by the prime minister, while
members of a state commission
would have been appointed by
the Supreme Court president.
Olmert's critics ask how
someone under investigation
can nominate his investigators.
His supporters counter that the
Winograd panel's independence
is beyond question — and, they
add, since it's a government-
appointed commission, the
Cabinet will be forced to accept
its findings and recommenda-
tions, even if it means political
leaders and top military brass
have to leave office.
In the war after the war, there
are several battlefields. Ex-gener-
als have been firing barbs at the
current crop of military leaders;
army commanders are pointing
fingers at their subordinates, and
vice-versa; former holders of key
offices are battling the incum-
bents; and generals and politi-
cians are blaming each other.
In interviews over the week-
end, former IDF Chief of Staff
Moshe Ya'alon, former Defense
Minister Shaul Mofaz and Gen.
Adam sharply criticized the
conduct of the war. Last Friday,
ex-generals were equally blunt
in their attacks on the IDF's top
command in a meeting with
Halutz. Ya'alon, who was IDF
chief of staff for much of the
period during which Hezbollah
built up its rocket arsenal in
Lebanon, claimed that the army
he handed over was ready for
war, but that the campaign had
been hopelessly mismanaged.
In an article in Ha' aretz titled
"No Way To Go To War," Ya'alon
described the way the ground
forces were used as a "catastrophe:'
"There was no defined goal.
There was no required achieve-
ment. They jumped from one
idea to the next and introduced
new missions all the time with-
out any logic,"Ya'alon declared.
Worse, he fumed, the final
ground attack was launched
when there was no need for it,
simply as a kind of photo op.
Therefore, Ya'alon concludes,
Olmert, Peretz and Halutz all
should go.
Ya'alon, whose term as army
head was not extended by former
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,
also claimed that officers had
been promoted because of their
political connections — another
broadside aimed at Halutz,
known for his close ties to
Sharon. Indeed, more than Iran
or Islamic terror, Ya'alon sees cor-
ruption in politics and the mili-
tary as the biggest threat Israel
faces today.
"If we do not act immediately
to uproot the corruption from
the political and military estab-
lishments, our very existence will
be in danger. Arrogance and cor-
ruption are the existential threat
to Israel today," he warned.
In an interview in Yediot
Achronot, Mofaz, who was chief
of staff and then defense minis-
ter for almost the entire period of
Hezbollah's build-up from 2000
to 2006, shrugged off charges
that he was responsible for the
army's lack of readiness and the
failure to pre-empt Hezbollah's
attack. Israel, he said, goes to
war only when there is no choice.
As to the army's readiness, he
argued that Operation Defensive
Shield against Palestinian ter-
rorism in 2002 showed what the
army could do when properly
operated.
Mofaz also slammed the final
ground offensive, a plan that
needed several weeks to imple-
ment fully but which was given
a mere 60 hours at the end of
the war before a cease-fire took
effect. "I asked Olmert what he
would say to parents of soldiers
killed in the 60-hour operation
at the end of the war, and he
replied, `A good question. I don't
have a good answer," Mofaz
recalled.
Speaking to Ma'ariv, Adam
said that "everything went back-
wards. Every 12 hours the plans
changed. How can you work like
that? You are frightened to make
a move because no one seems
able to withstand the pressure,
and every battle in which some-
thing goes wrong becomes a
national catastrophe."
On Sept. 15, Halutz held a
second meeting with reserve
generals, many of them heroes
of previous wars. They did not
spare him. Most outspoken was
a former northern command
chief, Avigdor Ben-Gal, who said
Halutz, the first air force man
to become chief of staff, also
would be the last. "An air force
man cannot command the army
and certainly not oversee the
operation of the ground forces,"
the celebrated former tank com-
mander declared.
Halutz has tended to shift
blame onto field commanders
like Adam or politicians like
Olmert and Peretz. For his part,
Peretz, who has scant military
background and had been in the
defense job for only two months
when the war broke out, blamed
his predecessors for shortages of
equipment and lack of ground-
force training. Olmert takes
responsibility for the decision to
go to war, but blames the army
for tactical mistakes in the con-
duct of the ground operations.
The irony is that Israeli leaders
are at loggerheads over a war that
could well have positive ramifica-
tions, possibly leading to a quiet
border in the north and better
relations with Lebanon and even
Syria. The angst comes from the
fact that Israelis and their leaders
know the country cannot afford
to be caught short militarily in
more testing circumstances in
the future.
But it's not clear whether the
process of inquiry and recom-
mendation will have a cathartic
or a destructive effect on Israeli
society. Will the focus be on fix-
ing the shortcomings the war
revealed or on apportioning
blame?
Can Halutz, Peretz and Olmert
put things right — or will new
brooms be needed to sweep clean
the IDF and the Israeli political
establishment?
September 21* 2006
21