Winograd commission report asserts Israel's failure in Lebanon war, considers Olmert's decision to go to war as proper but performance was failure

Lebanese govt.: report ignored massacres, destruction, resolution 1701

Israeli report called openly for preparations for new war

Barak tends to holding early elections amidst risks threatening govt.

The final report of the Winograd commission, set up to probe the failure of the Israeli war on Lebanon in July 2006, drew a criticism by several Lebanese official and political circles as the media office of the Lebanese prime minister called for "not tolerating the Hebrew state and holding it accountable for its actions."

Resigned Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh said the Winograd report has admitted the Israeli failure and consequently the dazzling triumph by the resistance and Lebanon, adding "the reality created by such a victory must be invested to claim rights with more insistence."

The media office of Prime Minister Fouad al-Siniora said the report "did not refer to the crimes committed by Israel against Lebanon and its people, particularly the massacres perpetrated in a number of villages and towns as well as the cluster bombs fired by the Israeli army on Lebanese soil."

The report, issued after an inquiry into Israel's 2006 war with Lebanon's Hezbollah, said it found "great and grave faults" in the decision-making of both the government and military.

Presenting its long-awaited final conclusions 18 months after the summer war, the commission nevertheless did not draw "personal conclusions," nor recommend the resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or other political and military leaders.

Despite its harsh criticism, it exonerated Olmert on several key claims made against him, including his decision to launch a large-scale, last-minute ground offensive in the final three days of the war.

Olmert, who earlier received the 617-page report at his Jerusalem office, said in initial reaction he would "thoroughly study" it over the coming days.

His aides were quick to say they were "relieved" by the commission's findings and said his critics "owe him an apology" for the "character assassination" they carried out against him.

But the hardline Likud party of Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the opposition called on Olmert to resign.

Relatives of soldiers who died in the war also set up a protest tent opposite the Tel Aviv home of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, demanding he pull his dovish Labor Party out Olmert's Kadima-led coalition.

"In the overall evaluation of the war we can see that there was a great and grave miss(ed opportunity)," Winograd told a news conference in occupied Al-Quds Wednesday evening, summing up his commission's almost 17-month-long investigation.

"Israel set out on a lengthy war, which it itself initiated, which ended without Israel winning a clear military victory.

"A paramilitary organization of thousands of fighters, stood during several weeks opposite the strongest army in the Middle East, which enjoyed absolute air superiority and advantages in size and technology," said the retired judge.

Olmert's decision to launch the large-scale military offensive came late and after a "long period of trudging." It therefore could not materialize its potential and failed to achieve any military goals.

Siniora said on Thursday that an Israel's inquiry report on the war against Hezbollah guerrillas in 2006 set the scene for a possible future conflict and failed to address "Israel's crimes against Lebanon."

The government-appointed Winograd Commission issued a report on Wednesday that criticized the conduct of the army and government during the war, but which endorsed key decisions made at the time by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

"The report calls for preparation for the next war, which shows that Israel has not learned the appropriate lesson from its defeat," a statement from Siniora's media office said.

The enemy's aims toward Lebanon have stayed the same - that is attacking Lebanon in the future."

Retired Supreme Court Justice Eliyahu Winograd, who headed the inquiry commission, said in a speech presenting his report that Israel must seek peace with its neighbors.

"At the same time, seeking peace or managing the conflict must come from a position of social, political and military strength, and through the ability and willingness to fight for the state, its values and the security of its population even in the absence of peace."

About 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 159 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were killed in the war, sparked when Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid.

Siniora also said the report did not mention the war's cost on Lebanon. Israel pounded the Hezbollah bastions of southern Beirut and south Lebanon with aircraft, warships and artillery. It also hit other parts of the country.

Hezbollah fired about 4,000 rockets into northern Israel.

"The report does not contain any mention of the crimes Israel committed against Lebanon ... or of the massacres against civilians ... the report also doesn't mention huge destruction to infrastructure most of which were hospitals, schools, places of worship, bridges and residential buildings."

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said this month he doubted Israel had the political and military leadership and qualified army to launch a new war on Lebanon.

Amnesty International called a report published yesterday by the Winograd Commission on Israel’s conduct in the war with Hezbollah in July-August 2006 “deeply flawed.”

The organization said that the report failed to investigate a crucial aspect of the war -- the government policies and military strategies that failed to discriminate between the Lebanese civilian population and Hezbollah combatants and between civilian property and infrastructure and military targets.

"This was yet another missed opportunity to address the policies and decisions behind the grave violations of international humanitarian law -- including war crimes -- committed by Israeli forces,” said Malcolm Smart, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Program.

“The indiscriminate killings of many Lebanese civilians not involved in the hostilities and the deliberate and wanton destruction of civilian properties and infrastructure on a massive scale were given no more than token consideration by the commission,” said Smart.

Though not vested with the powers of an official state commission of investigation, the Winograd Commission had the power to subpoena witnesses and recommend the prosecution of officials it found to have been responsible for willful or negligent criminal conduct.

However, the Commission chose to limit its work to reviewing military strategy and political decisions, and made no serious attempt to investigate violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes, committed by Israeli forces or to recommend measures for holding those responsible for such violations to account.

It recommends the development of mechanisms to ensure the effectiveness of fighting within the framework of international humanitarian law standards, immediate investigations by the army when there are concerns that international humanitarian law was violated and better preparedness for responding to humanitarian problems arising from military action. But it essentially brushed aside available evidence of serious violations of international law, claiming that interpretations of international humanitarian law are controversial, that it did not have the capacity to deal with the volume of data, that the alleged violations were already being investigated by other bodies, and that such allegations are used as propaganda against Israel -- whereas it did scrutinize military strategies and the conduct of certain operations in detail, including in cases which were already being investigated separately.

Based on its on-the-ground research and analysis of the conduct of hostilities in 2006, Amnesty International concluded that it was the Lebanese civilian population -- not Hezbollah combatants -- who paid the heaviest price of the Israeli army’s attacks. Of some 1,190 people killed, the vast majority were civilians not involved in the hostilities, among them hundreds of children. The overwhelming majority of homes, properties and infrastructure targeted in air strikes and artillery attacks were likewise civilian.

Other international human rights and humanitarian organizations and United Nations (UN) bodies that examined the situation reached the same conclusion. In its report of 10 November 2006 the UN Commission of Inquiry concluded that: “… a significant pattern of excessive, indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force by the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] against Lebanese civilians and civilian objects, failing to distinguish civilians from combatants and civilian objects from military targets”. A separate investigation by four UN independent experts also reported in October 2006 that “Available information strongly indicates that, in many instances, Israel violated its legal obligations to distinguish between military and civilian objectives; to fully apply the principle of proportionality”.

In addition, the launching of hundreds of thousands of cluster bombs, containing an estimated four million cluster sub-munitions (bomblets), in the last few days of the war left a deadly legacy. This is continuing to cause casualties among the civilian population, humanitarian workers, and mine-clearance personnel who put their lives on the line -- literally -- to clear unexploded ordnance.

"Although the Winograd Commission recommended that the army review its policies on the use of cluster bombs to ensure that the use of these weapons will not violate international humanitarian law and army discipline, it did not propose any concrete measures,” said Smart.

The Israeli government’s persistent refusal to hand over the cluster bombs strike data and the exact coordinates of the areas into which its forces fired the cluster bombs has made this already painstaking mine-clearance task more deadly and time consuming.

To date, 40 people (27 civilians and 13 de-mining personnel) have been killed and 243 have been injured (200 civilians and 34 de-mining personnel) by unexploded ordnance and the United Nation Mine Action Coordination Centre (UN-MACC) has identified more then 900 sites contaminated by unexploded but still lethal remnants of cluster bombs and other ordnance launched by Israeli forces into South Lebanon.