DAR AL HARB/ISLAM - ISRAEL/LEBANON: THE WINOGRAD REPORT

Lebanon War report met with joy, relief

Members of the Winograd Committee leave after reporting the final results of the 2006 Lebanon War probe in Jerusalem, January 30. The committee concluded that the second Lebanon War ended without victory and suffered serious failures by the Israeli political and military leadership.

The release Wednesday of the much awaited Winograd Commission report on Israel's failures in the 2006 Lebanon war, which was sparked by a cross-border raid by Lebanese based Hezbollah guerrillas, was claimed as a victory by Lebanon's army chief and Hezbollah and emboldening by Palestinian Hamas.

And contrary to widespread expectations, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was let off lightly for his failures during the 34-day war.

Olmert can now breath easy as he is expected to weather the latest challenge of his tumultuous term after the key government report spared him from a major drubbing by refraining from the harsh language it used in its interim findings nine months ago, which blasted him for "serious failure."

The Shiite Hezbollah movement, whose guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers in the raid that brought an Israeli invasion in response, welcomed the report's findings.

"Israel failed completely in achieving its goals and the Israeli army suffered a military defeat at the hands of Hezbollah," spokesman Hussein Rahal told AFP.

Hezbollah crowed that the report confirmed that its guerrillas had defeated the military might of Israel in a conflict that killed 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

The Palestinian Hamas movement echoed the sentiment, saying the report "reveals the weakness and the fragility of the Zionist entity."

"This report should embolden us to pursue our right of resistance in all its forms," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said in a statement.

Lebanon's army chief, General Michel Sleiman, said from Beirut that the report was a victory for both the Lebanese army and for Hezbollah.

"We did not expect an official Israeli body to condemn publicly its government and army," Sleiman, who is tipped to become president, told As-Safir newspaper. "The Winograd report confirms that Israel ... is the one that took the decision to launch war on Lebanon without any justification.

"Israel's public admission that its army failed in Lebanon strengthens our confidence in ourselves as Lebanese ... and confirms the joint victory of the army and the resistance," he added, using a common term for Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, the Western-backed government issued a statement in which it warned that Israel "failed to learn its lessons and is preparing for a new war on Lebanon."

The Winograd Commission, appointed by the Israeli government to probe the war, said the war was a missed opportunity and a grave failure for the Jewish state.

But although it criticized the war as a "serious missed opportunity" for Israel, and listed a number of failures, it said the premier had acted in what he sincerely believed to have been in the country's best interest.

"Acquitted," said a headline in the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper. "Olmert can breathe easy," said an editorial on the Ynet news Web site.

With most of its harsh criticism reserved for the military, the report by the government-appointed commission turned it "from a serious indictment to a public lifesaver for Ehud Olmert," Ynet said.

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I am currently looking for a PDF file of the WINOGRAD REPORT...It will be posted as soon as I find it...



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