The Casualties of War
Olmert's West Bank withdrawal plan is dead, and his own future is in doubt
JERUSALEM-The bumper stickers read: "We will win." This was Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's closing exhortation in his would-be Churchillian speech at the start of the Lebanon war. But as the furious, 34-day "Operation Change of Direction" came to an abrupt halt under a United Nations cease-fire, those blue-and-white stickers all but disappeared.
While Israel had given much better than it had gotten in southern Lebanon, the grim conclusion here was that the superpower of the Middle East had been stymied by a few thousand well-armed, well-trained guerrillas of Hezbollah. Suddenly, Israelis' confidence, which shot up after the successful withdrawal from Gaza a year ago and stayed up even through former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's incapacitation, was gone. Suddenly, it was overtaken by recriminations over the handling of the war and anxiety over the country's future in this unfriendly, volatile region.
The new, postwar slogans, not yet on bumper stickers but already on the headlines of editorials, are "Olmert must go," and Defense Minister Amir "Peretz must go," and Israel Defense Forces commander Dan "Halutz must go." What was seen here as nothing less than a "war of survival" has come to a deeply disillusioning end for Israel, so much so that the political and military leadership has lost the public's faith. One respected poll found Israelis disapproving of Olmert's war leadership by a 2-to-1 margin; just a week earlier, he'd won a 3-to-1 endorsement.
The government seems in no immediate danger of falling, but that could change rapidly, especially if the rising call for a blue-ribbon inquiry of the war proves irresistible. But Olmert's political survival is already threatened by an investigation into his alleged financial windfall from the sale of his family's Jerusalem apartment. If he comes out of that looking bad, he could have a hard time staying in office. Halutz, meanwhile, is fighting to hold on to his job following the discovery that he sold off a $28,000 stock portfolio a few hours after Hezbollah killed and kidnapped Israeli soldiers, which set the war in motion.
Harsh reality. It is difficult to imagine that there would have been such a domestic outcry over Olmert's and Halutz's financial dealings if the war had ended well. Instead, after starting with great patriotic conviction, it slammed into the harsh reality of Lebanon. Israeli leaders vowed at the outset to rid Israel of the threat of Hezbollah's guerrilla army, then gave glowing updates of the campaign's progress, but after a couple of weeks, it dawned on Israelis that Hezbollah wasn't going away. The terrorists fired as many as 250 rockets a day at northern Israel, killing 39 people, injuring some 5,000, and forcing the region's 1 million-plus residents to either flee south or hide in bomb shelters for the duration. The Army and Air Force found that Hezbollah had too many rockets, fortified bunkers, land mines, and antitank missiles to take out quickly.
Worse, reserve soldiers returning home are telling shocking tales of Army disorganization and confusion that encumbered them at the front. "We weren't even given equipment to adjust the sights on all of our weapons, which is the most basic thing you need to be ready for battle," said "Moshe," 34, a reserve sniper with a paratroopers unit. Because Hezbollah's antitank missiles proved so lethally destructive, the Army was reluctant to send out supply vehicles to the troops, so Moshe and his comrades were reduced to stealing food and water from the houses of the abandoned village where they made camp. "We got conflicting orders from day to day," he recalled. "It was a mess from top to bottom."
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