The committee noted that the military plan included four days to take over
the area south of the Litani River and four to six weeks to "cleanse" it.
Two days after the cabinet meeting, Olmert gave his approval for a 60-hour
campaign. Halutz gave the orders. The committee notes that "a reduction of
the timetable to 60 hours made the move unrealistic in terms of the
necessary achievement." It is therefore difficult to understand why the
decision to begin remained reasonable.
Confused? So are we.
....In a somewhat rough comparison, Israel's behavior in the war was similar
to that of a failing businessman who is about to close the deal of his life.
For 30 days he has conducted negotiations during which he made all the wrong
decisions and refused to assume any risk that could have led to an
achievement. And then, at the last moment, when time is running out and he
is under pressure, he takes a big gamble at an enormous cost. As opposed to
the conclusion of the committee, the fact that there was absolutely no
chance of success on August 11 was known in advance (and is indicated in the
report as well). And nonetheless, Olmert and Peretz decided in favor.
Why doesn't the committee say so?
Confused? So are we
By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff Haaretz 1 February 2008
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/950133.html
There will not be any catharsis here. The debate about the Second Lebanon
War can be expected to continue for a long time yet, until it totally
exhausts all participants. If anyone expected the final report from the
Winograd Committee to be the last word on the subject, their expectations
were dashed within minutes of Wednesday evening's press conference. Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert is certainly permitted to celebrate the removal of the
threat of a moral stain on his name regarding his decision on August 11,
2006, to embark on the final ground operation of the war. But his political
opponents and parts of the public will find in the report a large number of
arguments to support their demand that the person responsible for such an
unsuccessful war should resign.
Because of its tortuous logic and internal contradictions, it will be tough
for the report to become a formative document. As happened with the Agranat
Commission's report before it, the Winograd findings arouse strong feelings
of bitterness and frustration. It makes one suspect that once again an
official committee has succeeded in absolving the political echelon from
responsibility, while sending the generals into exile. Nowhere in the report
is this more evident than in the part concerning the war's last 60 hours.
Everything begins with legal definitions. The Winograd Committee is a
governmental investigative body, not a formal state commission of inquiry.
Its members were chosen and appointed by the prime minister rather than by
the president of the Supreme Court. In order to compensate for this lesser
status, the committee's writ of appointment endowed it with powers parallel
in part to those of a state commission of inquiry. But then came the
petition to the High Court of Justice by the military advocate general,
which pushed Winograd into a corner. Because of its fear that such a
procedure would be drawn out, the committee decided that it would not issue
letters of caution. But if individuals are not given such letters, then a
committee cannot draw personal conclusions about them. Nor will the defense
attorneys of those under caution be given a chance to cross-examine
witnesses or cross-check versions of events, as would be the case in a
quasi-legal procedure.
In relation to all other aspects of the war, the committee made use of the
mutual recriminations of the political and military echelons. The former
hesitated about sending in ground forces and the latter did not initiate an
attack, etc. On the question of the last chapter in the war, the committee
did not succeed in cutting the Gordian knot between the two echelons. Had
there been a state commission here, and had there been a
counter-investigation, a "state's witness" may have been found to dismantle
the shaky logical structure.
The Winograd Committee found that the desire to improve Israel's military
positions before the cease-fire was a reasonable political justification for
the ground invasion. It states that the considerations "required or at least
justified the continuation of the planned military step, if there really was
a reasonable operational expectation that it could achieve these goals in
the period of time remaining."
What was the time frame? In the August 9 cabinet meeting, then-chief of
staff Dan Halutz said: "There are no middle ways here, in which we do half,
we do a quarter, to satisfy part of our desires. It's all or nothing."
Public Security Minister Avi Dichter recommended examining the proposed step
in light of its goal: Was there a chance of achieving a significant
reduction of Katyushas in the time allotted? The chief of staff replied: "We
can conduct a four-day campaign, but it doesn't serve any purpose."
The committee noted that the military plan included four days to take over
the area south of the Litani River and four to six weeks to "cleanse" it.
Two days after the cabinet meeting, Olmert gave his approval for a 60-hour
campaign. Halutz gave the orders. The committee notes that "a reduction of
the timetable to 60 hours made the move unrealistic in terms of the
necessary achievement." It is therefore difficult to understand why the
decision to begin remained reasonable.
Confused? So are we.
Dialogue with the media
Did the committee scare itself? It is possible that the interim report that
brought over 100,000 people to Rabin Square calling on Olmert to resign
prompted the committee to redefine its task and to be satisfied with a hope
of bringing about systemic changes, keeping its distance from the political
arena. The committee's members have decided to impose a media silence on
themselves in the short term. When this silence is broken, it will be
important to know whether the final report is a compromise designed to
bridge differences of opinion on matters of principle.
From outset of the press conference, it was clear that Eliyahu Winograd was
carrying on a "dialogue" with the discussion of the war in the media. "We
had a unique advantage over other writers who wrote about the events of the
war," he said, "since we had access to a great deal of original and
systematic material." Nonetheless, some of the report's assertions are
inaccurate. For example, it states that 24 hours are needed between the time
a resolution is submitted to the UN Security Council and is then voted on.
But careful examination would have revealed that only a draft of a UN
General Assembly resolution requires 24 hours of perusal, not a Security
Council resolution.
Although the retired judge did not adopt the details of Olmert's narrative,
he agrees with its conclusions. He wonders in the report whether the entire
issue of the "disaster," as the prime minister's political adviser Shalom
Turjeman described the draft of the UN resolution that served as the excuse
for the operation, was actually a "breach or a crisis." The report says that
when U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns submitted the problematic
draft, he emphasized that negotiations were continuing and that it was not a
final version. Then why did Israel have the feeling of an impending
political catastrophe? Winograd has no answers.
And what exactly was said between Olmert and then defense minister Amir
Peretz on the afternoon of Friday, August 11, prior to the start of the
campaign? The report presents an abbreviated version of their conversation,
which is based on what the two chose to tell the committee. The report does
not have an answer to another significant question: When did the State of
Israel receive the final version of UN Security Council Resolution 1701,
which was the ostensible reason for the Israel Defense Forces embarking on
the final ground operation? According to an investigation by Haaretz, the
time was 8:20 P.M. on Friday - in other words, before the tanks entered
Lebanon.
The report raises another question: The committee admits that it was unable
to determine exactly why the final attack was stopped when 24 hours still
remained before the cease-fire was to take effect. Perhaps there really is
no need for an investigative body to answer that question. As it was
becoming increasingly clear that the timetable was insufficient for carrying
out the missions, and the number of casualties was mounting, apparently the
only question that interested the senior officers was how to bring home as
many soldiers as possible, and to begin to prepare for the investigative
committee. The report mentions that the political echelon was not even aware
of the fact that the operation had stopped.
In a somewhat rough comparison, Israel's behavior in the war was similar to
that of a failing businessman who is about to close the deal of his life.
For 30 days he has conducted negotiations during which he made all the wrong
decisions and refused to assume any risk that could have led to an
achievement. And then, at the last moment, when time is running out and he
is under pressure, he takes a big gamble at an enormous cost. As opposed to
the conclusion of the committee, the fact that there was absolutely no
chance of success on August 11 was known in advance (and is indicated in the
report as well). And nonetheless, Olmert and Peretz decided in favor.
Why doesn't the committee say so? Finance Minister Roni Bar-On, mentioned
that the absolving decision by Winograd came exactly a year after the prime
minister gave his testimony before the committee. Already then, said Bar-On,
the prime minister told the Kadima ministers about the positive statements
made by three of the committee members regarding the final operation (these
are the same citations that were first leaked in their entirety at the
beginning of this week). The dates are important: On January 30 of last
year, the Winograd Committee's members still thought that the minutes of the
testimony, which would include statements by committee members, were to
remain classified. It was only a week later, on February 6, that the High
Court of Justice ruled that the committee would have to make the testimony
available for publication. It turns out that even then the committee had
already committed itself to Olmert's viewpoint.
And there is apparently another, more important reason. One of the central
theses in the final report revolves around Winograd's criticism of the
paralyzing fear of the government and the IDF of losses in the war, which
made it difficult to take risks. The committee believes that Israel must be
prepared for a large number of sacrifices when it comes to protecting the
lives of its citizens and shortening the battle. Although Israeli society
has changed for the worse in its attitude toward losses, the committee
members are now preaching to the public and its leaders about the need for
change.
Had they ruled that the cost of the final operation, 33 dead, was
unnecessary, they would have subverted that central conclusion. In fact, one
can of course distinguish between the need for a major ground operation at
the beginning of the war (though this is also subject to debate), and the
futility of embarking on it when it is already "too little, too late." That,
however, the committee chose not to do.
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