Posted on 03/08/2007 10:09:57 PM PST by BlackVeil
ISRAELI Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has testified he launched last year’s war against Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon in line with a contingency plan he approved four months before, a newspaper has reported.
Olmert, under fire for his handling of the inconclusive 34-day war, told a judicial inquiry last month that Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 triggered the plans for a large-scale attack in Lebanon, the Israeli Haaretz newspaper said yesterday.
The inquiry, known as the Winograd Commission, is expected to publish an interim report this month. Haaretz, meanwhile, did not reveal how it had learned the details of Olmert’s February 1 testimony.
Many Israelis view Olmert’s decision to go to war as a knee-jerk reaction by a leader with little security experience, unlike his predecessor, former general Ariel Sharon.
In testimony apparently aimed at dismissing any notion he acted recklessly, Olmert told the commission he asked army commanders in March 2006 if a contingency plan for military action existed in the event soldiers were abducted along the Lebanon frontier, Haaretz said. Presented with options, he chose what the newspaper described as a “moderate plan” that included air strikes accompanied by a limited ground operation.
Opposition Likud party lawmaker Yuval Steinitz, who was chairman of parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee until mid-May 2006, said the Haaretz report had astounded him. “None of this ever happened,” he told Israel Radio. “There was no intensive preparation for a possible imminent war.”
He said Olmert had cut half a billion shekels (90 million) from the defence budget two months before the conflict, not the action of someone who “believes that in the next few months they will react to the next provocation with a war”.
Olmert and Defence Minister Amir Peretz have seen their popularity slump since the war, in which 158 Israelis — 117 soldiers and 41 civilians — were killed and thousands of Hezbollah rockets fired into the Jewish state. About 1,200 people were killed in Lebanon, including an estimated 270 Hezbollah guerrillas.
A UN-backed truce halted hostilities on August 14. Since then Hezbollah guerrillas have made way for Lebanese army troops and an expanded UN peacekeeping force to deploy in the south. Olmert has cited the deployments as an Israeli gain in the war.
But only 3% of Israelis would vote for Olmert if elections were held now, according to a poll released by Israel’s Channel 10 television on Wednesday. Olmert has also been dogged by political corruption scandals.
Typical conspiracy crap from the muslims. Shows how desperate Nasrallah is to try to legitamize their actions.
Opposition Likud party lawmaker Yuval Steinitz, who was chairman of parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee until mid-May 2006, said the Haaretz report had astounded him. “None of this ever happened,” he told Israel Radio. “There was no intensive preparation for a possible imminent war.”
If there was preparation and a plan, it would partly explain why Olmert has been so angry with the IDF, sacking so many senior commanders.
Nah...now as to the way the war was actually fought, they might have something there.
Why isn't Hassan Nasrallah dead yet?
If I may be excused for stating the obvious, plans by definition are made in advance.
Every nation's military has contingency plans drawn up in case they are attacked. There are numerous plans and options for every scenario. In other words Israel had more than one plan of response for a HizbuAllah incursion and kidnapping.
Militarized draw up lots of contingency plans. What else do you expect them to do in time of peace? Sit on their hands and do nothing?
the israeli version of the nytimes says...
oh, who cares
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