JERUSALEM, 3 February 2008 — The Israeli military failed in its 2006 war against Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas because the top commanders didn’t operate and communicate properly, and were late in preparing for a ground offensive, an ex-general said yesterday, after conducting an internal investigation.
The reserve general, Udi Shani, also said that the army chief at the time, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, wasn’t receptive enough to dissenting views among top commanders and should have spent more time near the front lines, rather than at military headquarters.
“The military failed,” Shani told Israel Radio. “It didn’t operate properly.” “The military failed because it had an erroneous concept,” he said, in an apparent reference to the heavy reliance on air strikes against Hezbollah.
The unusually frank criticism of the army command came just days after a five-member investigative panel, headed by retired Judge Eliyahu Winograd, issued its final report on the 34-day war, criticizing both the government and the army for “serious failings and flaws.”
Winograd said Israel did not win the war and the army did not provide an effective response to a sustained, deadly barrage of rocket fire from Hezbollah guerrillas. Despite a heavy Israeli aerial campaign, the guerrilla group rained nearly 4,000 rockets on northern Israel. Israeli reservists returning from the battlefield complained of poor training and a lack of ammunition and key supplies.
In parallel, Shani conducted an internal army investigation of the performance of the top command. He said the reliance on air attacks was reasonable in the first few days of the war, but that commanders then should have prepared for a ground offensive.
The military only embarked on the ground offensive at the last minute, just as a UN truce was about to take effect. More than 30 Israeli soldiers were killed in that fighting. Winograd said the 11th-hour offensive failed in its mission, did not improve Israel’s position and that the army was not prepared for it. However, he said the operation’s goals were legitimate.
Most of the army’s wartime commanders, including Halutz, have resigned since the war. According to official figures from both sides, between 1,035 and 1,191 Lebanese civilians and combatants died in the conflict, in addition to 119 Israeli soldiers and 40 civilians.
In another development, the Lebanese government and the army command criticized yesterday a late night attack on an army post south of Beirut that wounded two soldiers, saying such acts only serve the country’s enemies.
Friday’s attack targeted an army post in a southern suburb of Beirut in the same opposition stronghold where clashes between troops and Shiite protesters against electricity rationing last weekend left seven people dead. The army was expected to wrap-up an investigation into the deadly incident soon.
The army statement said Friday’s attack was one of several against army posts in Beirut and its suburbs in the past days. It did not say where other attacks occurred and whether there were other casualties among the troops.
The military said the attack aims to mislead the investigation aiming to find the truth. The statement also urged Lebanon’s political and spiritual leaders to stand by security agencies and be “careful of plans aiming to harms national coexistence and creating problems between the army and its people.”
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said in a statement that the timing of the attack is suspicious because it comes as the investigation is going on over Sunday’s deadly incident. “It only serves the interests of Lebanon’s enemies and the enemies of its stability,” Siniora said in comments released by his office.
The country has for the last year been engulfed by a sharp political crisis, compounded since November by the failure of Parliament to elect a head of state because of disputes between the US-backed majority and the Hezbollah-led opposition, which has the support of Syria and Iran.
