JERUSALEM, 4 March 2007 — A stinging report on the government’s handling of the Hezbollah rocket barrage against northern Israel during last summer’s war in Lebanon is due next week, public radio reported yesterday. State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss will submit an “extremely severe” report to a parliamentary committee on Tuesday after a lengthy investigation into the government’s handling of the north’s rocket-battered residents both before and during the 34-day war, the radio reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who saw his approval ratings plummet in the war’s aftermath, refused to be interviewed for the report and declined even to answer written questions submitted by Lindenstrauss, the radio report said. Tuesday’s preliminary findings precede a final report, to be released at a still undisclosed date, which will address the military’s performance during the controversial and inconclusive conflict.
During the war against Hezbollah last July and August, the resistance militia fired more than 4,000 rockets at northern Israel, forcing more than a million Israelis to spend a month in underground bomb shelters and scores more to flee south. More than 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers, were killed in the war which failed to achieve its main objectives — to stop Hezbollah from being able to fire rockets into Israel and to secure the release of two soldiers seized by militants in the July 12 cross-border raid that sparked the conflict.
Israel was also slammed abroad for the devastating use of its firepower in Lebanon, where more than 1,200 people were killed, and thousands of homes and infrastructure targets were bombed.
Meanwhile, on Palestinian political front, Hamas gave Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh its list of nominees for ministerial posts in a national unity Cabinet yesterday, but a source in the Islamist movement declined to reveal the names. Hamas and President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction signed a power-sharing deal last month in Saudi Arabia that stemmed factional fighting, but a unity government has yet to emerge.
Haniyeh of Hamas is due to meet Abbas in Gaza today to discuss the coalition, but the Hamas source said no announcement was likely because the two groups have yet to agree on who will fill the posts of interior minister and deputy prime minister.
