Olmert
Undone By The Militia
He Said He Could Destroy
By Robert Fisk
03 May, 2007
The
Independent
So
it has come to this. All those bodies, all those photographs of dead
children - more than 1,400 cadavers (we are not including the 230 or
so Hizbollah fighters and the Israeli soldiers who died) - are to be
commemorated with the possible resignation of an Israeli prime minister
who knew, and who cared, many Israelis suspect, little about war. Yes,
Hizbollah provoked last summer's folly by capturing two Israeli soldiers
on the Lebanese-Israel border, but Israel's response - so totally out
of proportion to the sin - produced another debacle for the Israeli
army and, presumably now, for its Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert.
Looking back at this terrifying,
futile war, with its grotesque ambitions to "destroy" the
Iranian-supported Hizbollah militia, it is incredible Mr Olmert did
not realise within days that his grandiose demands would founder. Insisting
the two captured Israeli soldiers should be released and the militarily
powerless Lebanese government should be held responsible for their capture
was never going to produce political or military results favourable
to Israel. One would have to add that Tzipi Livni's demand for the Prime
Mnister's resignation sits oddly with her support for this preposterous
war.
A close reading of the interim
report of Judge Eliahou Winograd's report on the summer war - to which
Mr Olmert himself only granted the title the "Second Lebanon War"
a month after it had happened - shows clearly that it was the Israeli
army which ran the military, strategic and political campaign. Again
and again in Winograd's report it is clear that Mr Olmert and his Defence
Minister failed to challenge "in a competent way" (in the
commission's devastating phrase) the plans of the Israeli army.
Day after day, for 34 days
after 12 July, the Israeli air force systematically destroyed the major
infrastructure of Lebanon, repeatedly claiming it was trying to avoid
civilian casualties while the world's press watched its aircraft blasting
men, women and children to pieces in Lebanon. Israelis, too, were savagely
killed in this war by Hizbollah's Iranian-provided missiles. But it
only proved the Israeli army, famous in legend and song but not in reality,
could not protect their own people. Hizbollah fighters were told by
their own leadership that if they would just withstand the air attacks,
they could bite the Israeli land forces when they invaded.
And bite they did. In the
final 24 hours of the war, 30 Israeli soldiers were killed by Hizbollah
fighters and their land offensive, so loudly trumpeted by Mr Olmert,
came to an end. During the conflict, a Hizbollah missile almost sank
an Israeli corvette - it burnt for 24 hours and was towed back to Haifa
before it was able to sink - and struck Israel's top secret military
air traffic control centre at Miron. The soldiers captured on the border
were never returned - pictures of them, still alive, are flaunted across
the border at Israeli troops to this day - and Hizbollah, far from being
destroyed, remain as powerful as ever;
And so one of Washington's
last "pro-American" cabinets in the Middle East is now threatened
by the very militia which Mr Olmert claimed he could destroy.
© 2007 Independent News
and Media Limited
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