by leslie susser
jta
After the long-awaited final Winograd report on the Second Lebanon War was published last week, all eyes turned to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
Barak, the Labor leader, could have withdrawn his party from the governing coalition of Ehud Olmert, whose wartime performance was the subject of much criticism in the report.
But Barak decided to remain in the government, and although he said he would work for early elections, he gave no inkling of any timetable.
Ironically, Barak, who was not part of the government during the Second Lebanon War, became the focus of Israelis’ protests against the government’s wartime conduct.
Likud opposition politicians, bereaved parents and army reservists campaigning for Olmert’s ouster all latched onto a promise Barak made last May in the run-up to Labor’s leadership primaries, when Barak vowed that if Olmert did not leave office when the Winograd Commission published its report, Barak would press for early elections.
In the lead-up to the release of the final report Jan. 30, anti-government protesters camped out outside Barak’s home, demanding he keep his word.
But Barak said he had decided to stay on as defense minister because of the serious security challenges Israel faces from Gaza, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran — and out of a need to continue to rehabilitate the Israel Defense Forces, which was heavily criticized in the report.
The report found that the military establishment and the government failed in the years leading up to the war and during the war itself, which the report said was seriously lacking in coherent strategies. The report also faulted Olmert’s performance but said he made his decisions, albeit flawed ones, with the country’s best interests at heart.
That gave Olmert’s coalition critics, such as Barak, wiggle room to stay in the government.
“I know I may pay a political price for this decision,” Barak declared after announcing he will keep Labor in the government. “But there is a country and an army that are much more important than me.”
Likud was sharply critical of Barak and described his arguments for staying on as “self-serving excuses.” IDF reservist protesters said Barak apparently “didn’t care about responsibility or his own credibility.”
The anti-government alliance of right-wing parties, bereaved parents and reserve soldiers intends to continue its protests to try to whip up a critical mass of public opposition Olmert will be unable to ignore.
This is what happened following the Agranat Commission’s report on the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Although that report blamed the IDF and not the political echelon, a vigorous postwar protest movement eventually forced then-Prime Minister Golda Meir and then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to resign.
Most observers, however, believe that a similar scenario in the present circumstances is unlikely.
The Winograd report pulled no punches. It said that in making the decision to go to war after the July 12, 2006 cross-border raid in which Hezbollah militiamen killed three Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two others, the government did not consider alternatives to war; did not define clear war aims; was indecisive about committing troops to battle; did not make adequate preparation for a ground operation, and, when it finally decided on one, it was a case of too little too late.
The commission also points to a string of systemic failures: a lack of strategic thinking, an unprofessional decision-making process, a wrong-headed military doctrine and poor interface between the top political and military echelons.
So how did Olmert survive with his job intact? There are two main reasons.
One, the commission makes no “personal recommendations” about removing anyone specific from office, prevented from doing so by Supreme Court appeals made by lawyers for the politicians and IDF generals. The court gave the commission the choice of sending warning letters to people compromised by its findings — or not to attach personal blame at all. To avoid lengthy legal proceedings that could have delayed the release of its findings indefinitely, the commission decided on the latter course.
Second, the anti-government protesters made a major tactical error: They focused their entire campaign against Olmert’s performance during the last 60 hours of the war, arguing that he ordered a final ground operation, in which 33 soldiers were killed, for self-serving political reasons. When the commission found that Olmert had acted reasonably and in good faith, even though the operation failed to achieve its goals, the opposition against him was deflated.
This public acquittal enabled Olmert to rally Kadima Knesset members around him and head off any potential internal rebellion. It also gave Barak the leeway he needed to release himself from his pledge to quit the Olmert government.
There is also a political reason for Olmert’s survival: Neither he nor Barak wants elections anytime soon, which polls show the Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu would win easily.
A Yediot Acharonot poll taken after the Wingorad report’s release showed that 30 percent of Israelis want Netanyahu as prime minister, 18 percent want Olmert and only 14 percent want Barak. A similar poll in Israel’s daily Ma’ariv had Netanyahu at 37.5 percent, Barak at 19.1 percent and Olmert at 14 percent.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California