JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert emerged relatively unscathed from the final report Wednesday on his handling of Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon, even though the inquiry criticized both the government and the army for “serious failings and flaws.”
The report stopped short of blaming Olmert personally for what many Israelis saw as a stunning debacle that emboldened the Jewish state’s enemies. A harsher indictment could have threatened Olmert’s rule and his stated goal of signing a peace treaty with the Palestinians within a year.
The head of a five-member investigative panel, retired judge Eliyahu Winograd, described a U.N.-brokered cease-fire as an “achievement for Israel.” And he said Olmert, in ordering a last-minute ground offensive, acted “out of a strong and sincere perception” of what the prime minister thought was “Israel’s interest.”
The final report stood in sharp contrast to a strongly worded interim report last April that criticized Olmert personally for “severe failure” in “hastily” going to war.
The war erupted on July 12, 2006, when Hezbollah guerrillas crossed into Israel, killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two others.
Olmert entered the conflict with enormous support from the Israeli public, but his popularity plunged after the campaign failed to achieve his declared goals — winning the soldiers’ release and crushing Hezbollah. The two soldiers have still not been heard from.
The 629-page report was delivered to Olmert an hour before it was made public at a news conference, and the prime minister’s office was “breathing a sigh of relief,” Olmert’s spokesman, Jacob Galanty, was quoted as saying.
Hussein Haj Hassan, a Hezbollah member of Lebanon’s parliament, told The Associated Press the report underlined Hezbollah’s victory. “The Winograd report is an acknowledgment of Israel’s responsibility for the war and its defeat,” he said.
