‘I have had my Bay of Pigs. Now I’m waiting for a missile crisis’ Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, responding to the Winograd Report.
On 30 April the Winograd Committee, a panel of five judges appointed by the Israeli government, delivered an interim report on the 33-day war on Lebanon in summer 2006. Committee chair Eliyahu Winograd spoke of ‘severe failures’ and declared that ‘We put the responsibility for these failures on the Prime Minister, the Defence Minister and the former Chief of Staff.’ The report says that ‘The Prime Minister did not adapt his plans once it became clear that the assumptions and expectations of Israel’s actions were not realistic and were not materialising.’ Hizbullah leader Hassan Nassrallha commented that: ‘Today the climate in the whole of the Zionist entity is that the war was a failure…the first important outcome of this commission is that it has finally and officially decided the issue of victory and defeat…this commission spoke about a very big defeat.’
The report criticises:
• Dan Halutz, then Chief of Staff, for leading the country to war unprepared and in an ‘impulsive manner’ and for not offering the government any alternatives, even accusing him of preventing senior officers who disagreed with him from expressing their opinions to the Cabinet;
• Amir Peretz, the Labour Minister of Defence, for being unaware of the army’s lack of preparedness;
• Olmert, for taking the country to war ‘without systematic consultation with others, especially outside the Israeli Defence Forces’;
• The cabinet, for approving the war without understanding its implications.
While Olmert’s testimony to the Committee covered more than 200 pages, only 89 of these have been made public. In his testimony, Olmert said that Condoleezza Rice had been in contact with him before he discussed the war with the cabinet. Olmert told the Committee that the cabinet’s main goal was the implementation of the UN Security Council resolution 1559, sponsored by Washington and Paris, which called for, among other things, the disarming of Hizbullah. This demonstrates Israel’s role as a proxy for US imperialism. A report in the Israeli Haaretz newspaper on 8 March 2007 says that Olmert first discussed preparing for a war against Lebanon on 8 January 2006, four days after he became acting Prime Minister, asking for detailed plans in March 2006. This was months before the Hizbullah’s abduction of two Israeli soldiers on 12 July which was the pretext for the invasion.
The Winograd Committee has no comment on the war crimes committed in the onslaught which killed thousands, destroyed Lebanese infrastructure and created over 500,000 refugees.
Manal Darwish
FRFI 197 June / July 2007
