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."
The cease-fire-which somehow withstood the killing of 11 Hezbollah guerrillas by Israeli troops in the first two days-left Israel in a far weaker position than Olmert had led the country to anticipate. "Israel has chalked up impressive achievements that are unparalleled, perhaps even unprecedented," he declared in the thick of the war. "We can say with certainty that the face of the Middle East has already been changed." He pledged repeatedly not to call off the fighting until Hezbollah was disarmed and displaced in southern Lebanon by a large, "robust" multinational fighting force.
The cease-fire, however, found Hezbollah still well armed in southern Lebanon, with nobody prepared to take away its Iranian-issued weapons. The Lebanese Army, which includes a large proportion of pro-Hezbollah Shiite troops, moved into the south alongside a decidedly unrobust United Nations peacekeepers mission-leaving the potential for more trouble along the border. The cease-fire also left Israel still waiting for the return of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, the two kidnapped soldiers whose unconditional release was first among Olmert's original war goals. Realistically, Israel will only get them back the old-fashioned way-by freeing hundreds of Lebanese prisoners in return.
This wasn't the first time Israel tried to crush Hezbollah militarily and failed; that came in 1982 and ended 18 years later when Israeli troops finally quit Lebanon. Yet, Israel's leaders convinced themselves and the public that what couldn't be accomplished in 18 years could be achieved now in a matter of weeks. They set the bar for victory so high that all Hezbollah had to do to "win" was survive. They created such heady expectations in the public that the war's inconclusive outcome was bound to be an awful disillusionment.
Return of the right? Among the casualties is Israel's latest political path, which Sharon opened with the Gaza disengagement and Olmert hoped to complete with his "consolidation plan" for the West Bank. The path is one of unilateral withdrawal from Arab territories, with security ensured by Israeli military deterrence. It went bad first in Gaza, where fierce fighting was overshadowed by the war in the north, then went worse on the Lebanese border, whose relative quiet during the six years since the Israeli pullout had served as a model for this latest road to peace, or at least peace and quiet.
"The concept of unilateral withdrawal has collapsed, and I don't think I'm expressing the sentiment only of my party colleagues but of nearly everyone in this chamber," right-wing Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu told the Knesset. Indeed, several cabinet ministers and Knesset members from Olmert's Kadima (Forward) party are now coming out publicly against the West Bank consolidation plan. The war has brought former Prime Minister Netanyahu and the political right back in from the cold.
Yet if the war has discredited the consensus around unilateral withdrawal, it wasn't exactly an advertisement for the old consensus around the virtues of military force. Then again, with enemies like Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria, and Iran, Israelis don't find peace negotiations very promising, either. They have the sense that every course they've tried has failed-not because of Israel but because of the Arabs-and now they don't know where else to go. "I saw that all the other ways didn't work, so I believed that unilateral withdrawal would bring peace, but I was wrong. Now I see that no matter how much land we give them, they will always want to destroy us," said Meirav Lev, serving dinner on the patio of her family's home in pastoral Kiryat Tivon, which took many rocket attacks. Lev, 36, an attorney, sat out the war with her three children in her parents' house further south, while her husband, Yaron, was called to reserve duty, though not-"thank God," she said-in Lebanon.
"I hoped that my children would not have to go to the Army when they grow up. But so many soldiers were killed in this war that now I think I should have another baby," said Lev. "I'm sorry to say it, but our country is always going to have to live by the sword."
With Orly Halpern in northern Israel
This story appears in the August 28, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.