Israel's supposedly "defensive" assault on Hizbullah last summer, in which more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed in a massive aerial bombardment that ended with Israel littering the country's south with cluster bombs, was cast in a definitively different light last week by Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert.
His leaked testimony to the Winograd Committee -- investigating the government's failures during the month-long attack -- suggests that he had been preparing for such a war at least four months before the official casus belli: the capture by Hizbullah of two Israeli soldiers from a border post on 12 July 2006. Lebanon's devastation was apparently designed to teach both Hizbullah and the country's wider public a lesson.
His leaked testimony to the Winograd Committee -- investigating the government's failures during the month-long attack -- suggests that he had been preparing for such a war at least four months before the official casus belli: the capture by Hizbullah of two Israeli soldiers from a border post on 12 July 2006. Lebanon's devastation was apparently designed to teach both Hizbullah and the country's wider public a lesson.
Olmert's new account clarifies the confusing series of official justifications for the war from the time.
First, we were told that the seizure of the soldiers was "an act of war" by Lebanon and that a "shock and awe" campaign was needed to secure their release. Or, as the then Chief of Staff Dan Halutz -- taking time out from disposing of his shares before market prices fell -- explained, his pilots were going to "turn the clock back 20 years" in Lebanon.
Then the army claimed that it was trying to stop Hizbullah's rocket strikes. But the bombing campaign targeted not only the rocket launchers but much of Lebanon, including Beirut. (It was, of course, conveniently overlooked that Hizbullah's rockets fell as a response to the Israeli bombardment and not the other way round.)
And finally we were offered variations on the theme that ended the fighting: the need to push Hizbullah (and, incidentally, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians) away from the northern border with Israel.
That was the thrust of UN Resolution 1701 that brought about the official end of hostilities in mid-August. It also looked suspiciously like the reason why Israel chose at the last-minute to dump up to a million tiny bomblets -- old US stocks of cluster munitions with a very high failure rate -- that are lying in south Lebanon's fields, playgrounds and back yards waiting to explode.
What had been notable before Olmert's latest revelation was the clamor of the military command to distance itself from Israel's failed attack on Hizbullah. After his resignation, Halutz blamed the political echelon (meaning primarily Olmert), while his subordinates blamed both Olmert and Halutz. The former Chief of Staff was rounded on mainly because, it was claimed, being from the air force, he had over-estimated the likely effectiveness of his pilots in "neutralizing" Hizbullah's rockets.
Given this background, Olmert has been obliging in his testimony to Winograd. He has not only shouldered responsibility for the war to the Committee, but, if Israeli media reports are to be believed, he has also publicized the fact by leaking the details.
Olmert told Winograd that, far from making war on the hoof in response to the capture of the two soldiers (the main mitigating factor for Israel's show of aggression), he had been planning the attack on Lebanon since at least March 2006.
His testimony is more than plausible. Allusions to pre-existing plans for a ground invasion of Lebanon can be found in Israeli reporting from the time. On the first day of the war, for example, the Jerusalem Post reported: "Only weeks ago, an entire reserve division was drafted in order to train for an operation such as the one the IDF is planning in response to Wednesday morning's Hizbullah attacks on IDF forces along the northern border."
Olmert defended the preparations to the Committee on the grounds that Israel expected Hizbullah to seize soldiers at some point and wanted to be ready with a harsh response. The destruction of Lebanon would deter Hizbullah from considering another such operation in the future.
There was an alternative route that Olmert and his commanders could have followed: they could have sought to lessen the threat of attacks on the northern border by damping down the main inciting causes of Israel's conflict with Hizbullah.
According to Olmert's testimony, he was seeking just such a solution to the main problem: a small corridor of land known as the Shebaa Farms claimed by Lebanon but occupied by Israel since 1967. As a result of the Farms area's occupation, Hizbullah has argued that Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 was incomplete and that the territory still needed liberating.
Olmert's claim, however, does not stand up to scrutiny.
The Israeli media revealed in January that for much of the past two years Syria's leader, Bashir Assad, has been all but prostrating himself before Israel in back-channel negotiations over the return of Syrian territory, the Golan, currently occupied by Israel. Although those talks offered Israel the most favorable terms it could have hoped for (including declaring the Golan a peace park open to Israelis), Sharon and then Olmert -- backed by the US -- refused to engage Damascus.
A deal on the Golan with Syria would almost certainly have ensured that the Shebaa Farms were returned to Lebanon. Had Israel or the US wanted it, they could have made considerable progress on this front.
The other major tension was Israel's repeated transgressions of the northern border, complemented by Hizbullah's own, though less frequent, violations. After the army's withdrawal in 2000, United Nations monitors recorded Israeli warplanes violating Lebanese airspace almost daily. Regular overflights were made to Beirut, where pilots used sonic booms to terrify the local population, and drones spied on much of the country. Again, had Israel halted these violations of Lebanese sovereignty, Hizbullah's own breach of Israeli sovereignty in attacking the border post would have been hard to justify.
And finally, when Hizbullah did capture the soldiers, there was a chance for Israel to negotiate over their return. Hizbullah made clear from the outset that it wanted to exchange the soldiers for a handful of Lebanese prisoners still in Israeli jails. But, of course, as Olmert's testimony implies, Israel was not interested in talks or in halting its bombing campaign. That was not part of the plan.
We can now start to piece together why.
According to the leaks, Olmert first discussed the preparations for a war against Lebanon in January and then asked for detailed plans in March.
Understandably given the implications, Olmert's account has been decried by leading Israeli politicians. Effi Eitam has pointed out that Olmert's version echoes that of Hizbullah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who claims his group knew that Israel wanted to attack Lebanon.
And Yuval Steinitz argues that, if a war was expected, Olmert should not have approved a large cut to the defense budget only weeks earlier. The explanation for that, however, can probably be found in the forecasts about the war's outcome expressed in cabinet by Halutz and government ministers. Halutz reportedly believed that an air campaign would defeat Hizbullah in two to three days, after which Lebanon's infrastructure could be wrecked unimpeded. Some ministers apparently thought the war would be over even sooner.
In addition, a red herring has been offered by the General Staff, whose commanders are claiming to the Israeli media that they were kept out of the loop by the prime minister. If Olmert was planning a war against Lebanon, they argue, he should not have left them so unprepared.
It is an intriguing, and unconvincing, proposition: who was Olmert discussing war preparations with, if not with the General Staff? And how was he planning to carry out that war if the General Staff was not intimately involved?
More interesting are the dates mentioned by Olmert. His first discussion of a war against Lebanon was held on 8 January 2006, four days after he became acting prime minister following Ariel Sharon's brain hemorrhage and coma. Olmert held his next meeting on the subject in March, presumably immediately after his victory in the elections. There were apparently more talks in April, May and July.
Rather than the impression that has been created by Olmert of a rookie prime minister and military novice "going it alone" in planning a major military offensive against a neighboring state, a more likely scenario starts to take shape. It suggests that from the moment that Olmert took up the reins of power, he was slowly brought into the army's confidence, first tentatively in January and then more fully after his election. He was allowed to know of the senior command's secret and well-advanced plans for war -- plans, we can assume, his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, a former general, had been deeply involved in advancing.
But why would Olmert now want to shoulder responsibility for the unsuccessful war if he only approved, rather than formulated, it? Possibly because Olmert, who has appeared militarily weak and inexperienced to the Israeli public, does not want to prove his critics right. And also because, with most of his political capital exhausted, he would be unlikely to survive a battle for Israeli hearts and minds against the army (according to all polls, the most revered institution in Israeli society) should he try to blame them for last summer's fiasco. With Halutz gone, Olmert has little choice but to say "mea cupla".
What is the evidence that Israel's generals had already established the protocols for a war?
First, an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, published soon after the outbreak of war, revealed that the Israeli army had been readying for a wide-ranging assault on Lebanon for years, and had a specific plan for a "Three-Week War" that they had shared with Washington think-tanks and US officials.
"More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail," wrote reporter Matthew Kalman.
That view was confirmed this week by an anonymous senior officer who told the Haaretz newspaper that the army had a well-established plan for an extensive ground invasion of Lebanon, but that Olmert had shied away from putting it into action. "I don't know if he [Olmert] was familiar with the details of the plan, but everyone knew that the IDF [army] had a ground operation ready for implementation."
And second, we have an interview in the Israeli media with Meyrav Wurmser, the wife of one of the highest officials in the Bush Administration, David Wurmser, Vice-President Dick Cheney's adviser on the Middle East. Meyrav Wurmser, an Israeli citizen, is herself closely associated with MEMRI, a group translating (and mistranslating) speeches by Arab leaders and officials that is known for its ties to the Israeli secret services.
She told the website of Israel's leading newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, that the US stalled over imposing a ceasefire during Israel's assault on Lebanon because the Bush Administration was expecting the war to be expanded to Syria.
"The anger [in the White House] is over the fact that Israel did not fight against the Syrians The neocons are responsible for the fact that Israel got a lot of time and space. They believed that Israel should be allowed to win. A great part of it was the thought that Israel should fight against the real enemy, the one backing Hizbullah. It was obvious that it is impossible to fight directly against Iran, but the thought was that its [Iran's] strategic and important ally [Syria] should be hit."
In other words, the picture that emerges is of a long-standing plan by the Israeli army, approved by senior US officials, for a rapid war against Lebanon -- followed by possible intimidatory strikes against Syria -- using the pretext of a cross-border incident involving Hizbullah. The real purpose, we can surmise, was to weaken what are seen by Israel and the US to be Tehran's allies before an attack on Iran itself.
That was why neither the Americans nor Israel wanted, or appear still to want, to negotiate with Assad over the Golan and seek a peace agreement that could -- for once -- change the map of the Middle East for the better.
Despite signs of a slight thawing in Washington's relations with Iran and Syria in the past few days, driven by the desperate US need to stop sinking deeper into the mire of Iraq, Damascus is understandably wary.
The continuing aggressive Israeli and US postures have provoked a predictable reaction from Syria: it has started building up its defenses along the border with Israel. But in the Alice Through the Looking Glass world of Israeli military intelligence, that response is being interpreted -- or spun -- as a sign of an imminent attack by Syria.
Such, for example, is the opinion of Martin Van Creveld, an Israeli professor of military history, usually described as eminent and doubtless with impeccable contacts in the Israeli military establishment, who recently penned an article in the American Jewish weekly, the Forward.
He suggests that Syria, rather than wanting to negotiate over the Golan -- as all the evidence suggests -- is planning to launch an attack on Israel, possibly using chemical weapons, in October 2008 under cover of fog and rain. The goal of the attack? Apparently, says the professor, Syria wants to "inflict casualties" and ensure Jerusalem "throws in the towel".
What's the professor's evidence for these Syrian designs? That its military has been on an armaments shopping spree in Russia, and has been studying the lessons of the Lebanon war.
He predicts (of Syria, not Israel) the following: "Some incident will be generated and used as an excuse for opening rocket fire on the Golan Heights and the Galilee." And he concludes: "Overall the emerging Syrian plan is a good one with a reasonable chance of success."
And what can stop the Syrians? Not peace talks, argues Van Creveld. "Obviously, much will depend on what happens in Iraq and Iran. A short, successful American offensive in Iran may persuade Assad that the Israelis, much of whose hardware is either American or American-derived, cannot be countered, especially in the air. Conversely, an American withdrawal from Iraq, combined with an American-Iranian stalemate in the Persian Gulf, will go a long way toward untying Assad's hands."
It all sounds familiar. Iran wants the nuclear destruction of Israel, and Syria wants Jerusalem to "throw in the towel" -- or so the neocons and the useful idiots of "the clash of civilizations" would have us believe. The fear must be that they get their way and push Israel and the US towards another pre-emptive war -- or maybe two.
Jonathan Cook, a British journalist living in Nazareth, is the author of Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (Pluto Press, 2006). Visit his website at:
http://www.jkcook.net/
First, we were told that the seizure of the soldiers was "an act of war" by Lebanon and that a "shock and awe" campaign was needed to secure their release. Or, as the then Chief of Staff Dan Halutz -- taking time out from disposing of his shares before market prices fell -- explained, his pilots were going to "turn the clock back 20 years" in Lebanon.
Then the army claimed that it was trying to stop Hizbullah's rocket strikes. But the bombing campaign targeted not only the rocket launchers but much of Lebanon, including Beirut. (It was, of course, conveniently overlooked that Hizbullah's rockets fell as a response to the Israeli bombardment and not the other way round.)
And finally we were offered variations on the theme that ended the fighting: the need to push Hizbullah (and, incidentally, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians) away from the northern border with Israel.
That was the thrust of UN Resolution 1701 that brought about the official end of hostilities in mid-August. It also looked suspiciously like the reason why Israel chose at the last-minute to dump up to a million tiny bomblets -- old US stocks of cluster munitions with a very high failure rate -- that are lying in south Lebanon's fields, playgrounds and back yards waiting to explode.
What had been notable before Olmert's latest revelation was the clamor of the military command to distance itself from Israel's failed attack on Hizbullah. After his resignation, Halutz blamed the political echelon (meaning primarily Olmert), while his subordinates blamed both Olmert and Halutz. The former Chief of Staff was rounded on mainly because, it was claimed, being from the air force, he had over-estimated the likely effectiveness of his pilots in "neutralizing" Hizbullah's rockets.
Given this background, Olmert has been obliging in his testimony to Winograd. He has not only shouldered responsibility for the war to the Committee, but, if Israeli media reports are to be believed, he has also publicized the fact by leaking the details.
Olmert told Winograd that, far from making war on the hoof in response to the capture of the two soldiers (the main mitigating factor for Israel's show of aggression), he had been planning the attack on Lebanon since at least March 2006.
His testimony is more than plausible. Allusions to pre-existing plans for a ground invasion of Lebanon can be found in Israeli reporting from the time. On the first day of the war, for example, the Jerusalem Post reported: "Only weeks ago, an entire reserve division was drafted in order to train for an operation such as the one the IDF is planning in response to Wednesday morning's Hizbullah attacks on IDF forces along the northern border."
Olmert defended the preparations to the Committee on the grounds that Israel expected Hizbullah to seize soldiers at some point and wanted to be ready with a harsh response. The destruction of Lebanon would deter Hizbullah from considering another such operation in the future.
There was an alternative route that Olmert and his commanders could have followed: they could have sought to lessen the threat of attacks on the northern border by damping down the main inciting causes of Israel's conflict with Hizbullah.
According to Olmert's testimony, he was seeking just such a solution to the main problem: a small corridor of land known as the Shebaa Farms claimed by Lebanon but occupied by Israel since 1967. As a result of the Farms area's occupation, Hizbullah has argued that Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 was incomplete and that the territory still needed liberating.
Olmert's claim, however, does not stand up to scrutiny.
The Israeli media revealed in January that for much of the past two years Syria's leader, Bashir Assad, has been all but prostrating himself before Israel in back-channel negotiations over the return of Syrian territory, the Golan, currently occupied by Israel. Although those talks offered Israel the most favorable terms it could have hoped for (including declaring the Golan a peace park open to Israelis), Sharon and then Olmert -- backed by the US -- refused to engage Damascus.
A deal on the Golan with Syria would almost certainly have ensured that the Shebaa Farms were returned to Lebanon. Had Israel or the US wanted it, they could have made considerable progress on this front.
The other major tension was Israel's repeated transgressions of the northern border, complemented by Hizbullah's own, though less frequent, violations. After the army's withdrawal in 2000, United Nations monitors recorded Israeli warplanes violating Lebanese airspace almost daily. Regular overflights were made to Beirut, where pilots used sonic booms to terrify the local population, and drones spied on much of the country. Again, had Israel halted these violations of Lebanese sovereignty, Hizbullah's own breach of Israeli sovereignty in attacking the border post would have been hard to justify.
And finally, when Hizbullah did capture the soldiers, there was a chance for Israel to negotiate over their return. Hizbullah made clear from the outset that it wanted to exchange the soldiers for a handful of Lebanese prisoners still in Israeli jails. But, of course, as Olmert's testimony implies, Israel was not interested in talks or in halting its bombing campaign. That was not part of the plan.
We can now start to piece together why.
According to the leaks, Olmert first discussed the preparations for a war against Lebanon in January and then asked for detailed plans in March.
Understandably given the implications, Olmert's account has been decried by leading Israeli politicians. Effi Eitam has pointed out that Olmert's version echoes that of Hizbullah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who claims his group knew that Israel wanted to attack Lebanon.
And Yuval Steinitz argues that, if a war was expected, Olmert should not have approved a large cut to the defense budget only weeks earlier. The explanation for that, however, can probably be found in the forecasts about the war's outcome expressed in cabinet by Halutz and government ministers. Halutz reportedly believed that an air campaign would defeat Hizbullah in two to three days, after which Lebanon's infrastructure could be wrecked unimpeded. Some ministers apparently thought the war would be over even sooner.
In addition, a red herring has been offered by the General Staff, whose commanders are claiming to the Israeli media that they were kept out of the loop by the prime minister. If Olmert was planning a war against Lebanon, they argue, he should not have left them so unprepared.
It is an intriguing, and unconvincing, proposition: who was Olmert discussing war preparations with, if not with the General Staff? And how was he planning to carry out that war if the General Staff was not intimately involved?
More interesting are the dates mentioned by Olmert. His first discussion of a war against Lebanon was held on 8 January 2006, four days after he became acting prime minister following Ariel Sharon's brain hemorrhage and coma. Olmert held his next meeting on the subject in March, presumably immediately after his victory in the elections. There were apparently more talks in April, May and July.
Rather than the impression that has been created by Olmert of a rookie prime minister and military novice "going it alone" in planning a major military offensive against a neighboring state, a more likely scenario starts to take shape. It suggests that from the moment that Olmert took up the reins of power, he was slowly brought into the army's confidence, first tentatively in January and then more fully after his election. He was allowed to know of the senior command's secret and well-advanced plans for war -- plans, we can assume, his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, a former general, had been deeply involved in advancing.
But why would Olmert now want to shoulder responsibility for the unsuccessful war if he only approved, rather than formulated, it? Possibly because Olmert, who has appeared militarily weak and inexperienced to the Israeli public, does not want to prove his critics right. And also because, with most of his political capital exhausted, he would be unlikely to survive a battle for Israeli hearts and minds against the army (according to all polls, the most revered institution in Israeli society) should he try to blame them for last summer's fiasco. With Halutz gone, Olmert has little choice but to say "mea cupla".
What is the evidence that Israel's generals had already established the protocols for a war?
First, an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, published soon after the outbreak of war, revealed that the Israeli army had been readying for a wide-ranging assault on Lebanon for years, and had a specific plan for a "Three-Week War" that they had shared with Washington think-tanks and US officials.
"More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail," wrote reporter Matthew Kalman.
That view was confirmed this week by an anonymous senior officer who told the Haaretz newspaper that the army had a well-established plan for an extensive ground invasion of Lebanon, but that Olmert had shied away from putting it into action. "I don't know if he [Olmert] was familiar with the details of the plan, but everyone knew that the IDF [army] had a ground operation ready for implementation."
And second, we have an interview in the Israeli media with Meyrav Wurmser, the wife of one of the highest officials in the Bush Administration, David Wurmser, Vice-President Dick Cheney's adviser on the Middle East. Meyrav Wurmser, an Israeli citizen, is herself closely associated with MEMRI, a group translating (and mistranslating) speeches by Arab leaders and officials that is known for its ties to the Israeli secret services.
She told the website of Israel's leading newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, that the US stalled over imposing a ceasefire during Israel's assault on Lebanon because the Bush Administration was expecting the war to be expanded to Syria.
"The anger [in the White House] is over the fact that Israel did not fight against the Syrians The neocons are responsible for the fact that Israel got a lot of time and space. They believed that Israel should be allowed to win. A great part of it was the thought that Israel should fight against the real enemy, the one backing Hizbullah. It was obvious that it is impossible to fight directly against Iran, but the thought was that its [Iran's] strategic and important ally [Syria] should be hit."
In other words, the picture that emerges is of a long-standing plan by the Israeli army, approved by senior US officials, for a rapid war against Lebanon -- followed by possible intimidatory strikes against Syria -- using the pretext of a cross-border incident involving Hizbullah. The real purpose, we can surmise, was to weaken what are seen by Israel and the US to be Tehran's allies before an attack on Iran itself.
That was why neither the Americans nor Israel wanted, or appear still to want, to negotiate with Assad over the Golan and seek a peace agreement that could -- for once -- change the map of the Middle East for the better.
Despite signs of a slight thawing in Washington's relations with Iran and Syria in the past few days, driven by the desperate US need to stop sinking deeper into the mire of Iraq, Damascus is understandably wary.
The continuing aggressive Israeli and US postures have provoked a predictable reaction from Syria: it has started building up its defenses along the border with Israel. But in the Alice Through the Looking Glass world of Israeli military intelligence, that response is being interpreted -- or spun -- as a sign of an imminent attack by Syria.
Such, for example, is the opinion of Martin Van Creveld, an Israeli professor of military history, usually described as eminent and doubtless with impeccable contacts in the Israeli military establishment, who recently penned an article in the American Jewish weekly, the Forward.
He suggests that Syria, rather than wanting to negotiate over the Golan -- as all the evidence suggests -- is planning to launch an attack on Israel, possibly using chemical weapons, in October 2008 under cover of fog and rain. The goal of the attack? Apparently, says the professor, Syria wants to "inflict casualties" and ensure Jerusalem "throws in the towel".
What's the professor's evidence for these Syrian designs? That its military has been on an armaments shopping spree in Russia, and has been studying the lessons of the Lebanon war.
He predicts (of Syria, not Israel) the following: "Some incident will be generated and used as an excuse for opening rocket fire on the Golan Heights and the Galilee." And he concludes: "Overall the emerging Syrian plan is a good one with a reasonable chance of success."
And what can stop the Syrians? Not peace talks, argues Van Creveld. "Obviously, much will depend on what happens in Iraq and Iran. A short, successful American offensive in Iran may persuade Assad that the Israelis, much of whose hardware is either American or American-derived, cannot be countered, especially in the air. Conversely, an American withdrawal from Iraq, combined with an American-Iranian stalemate in the Persian Gulf, will go a long way toward untying Assad's hands."
It all sounds familiar. Iran wants the nuclear destruction of Israel, and Syria wants Jerusalem to "throw in the towel" -- or so the neocons and the useful idiots of "the clash of civilizations" would have us believe. The fear must be that they get their way and push Israel and the US towards another pre-emptive war -- or maybe two.
Jonathan Cook, a British journalist living in Nazareth, is the author of Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (Pluto Press, 2006). Visit his website at:
http://www.jkcook.net/
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Lying To Start A War Of Aggression
14.03.2007 03:02
Olmert's Truth
by Uri Avnery
(Sunday, March 11, 2007)
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"If the Americans reach an agreement with the Syrians, using this threat among others, it is they who will garner the political profits from any accord we reach with Syria in the end."
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If God wills, even a broomstick will shoot. That is an old Yiddish adage. One could add now: If God wills, even Olmert can sometimes tell the truth.
The truth, according to the Prime Minister's testimony before the Inquiry Commission headed by Judge Vinograd that was leaked to the media yesterday, is that this was not a spontaneous reaction to the capture of the two soldiers, but a war planned a long time ago. We said so right from the start.
Olmert told the commission that immediately after assuming the functions of acting prime minister, in January 2006, he consulted with the army chiefs about the situation on the northern border. Until then, the prevailing doctrine followed Ariel Sharon's decision - logical from his point of view - not to react in force to provocations in the north, so that the Israeli army could concentrate on fighting the Palestinians. But this enabled Hizbullah to build up a large stockpile of rockets of all kinds. Olmert decided to change that policy.
The army prepared a two-pronged plan: an operation on the ground aimed at the elimination of Hizbullah, and an aerial offensive, aimed at the destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure, in order to put pressure on the Lebanese public which in turn would put pressure on Hizbullah. As the Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, said at the beginning of the war: "we shall turn Lebanon's clock back 20 years." (a rather modest aim, compared to the famous proposal of an American colleague: to "bomb Vietnam back to the stone age".) The Air Force was also tasked with destroying Hizbullah's rocket arsenal.
But nowadays it is not proper anymore to attack a country without a convincing reason. Already before the First Lebanon War, the Americans demanded that Israel attack only after a clear provocation that would convince the world. The necessary justification was provided at the right time by the Abu Nidal gang, which tried to assassinate the Israeli ambassador in London. In the recent case, it was decided in advance that the capture of Israeli soldiers would constitute such a provocation.
A cynic might argue that this decision turned Israeli soldiers into bait. It was known that Hizbullah wanted to capture soldiers in order to force a prisoner exchange. The regular Israeli army patrols along the border fence were, in a way, a standing invitation to Hizbullah to carry out their evil design.
The capture of the soldier Gilad Shalit by Palestinians near the Gaza border fence turned on a red light in Israel. Olmert said in his testimony that from that moment on, he was convinced that Hizbullah was about to try to carry out a similar exploit.
If so, the prime minister should perhaps have ordered the army to halt the patrols along the northern border, or to reinforce them in a way that would deter Hizbullah. That was not done. The poor members of the fateful patrol set out on their way as to a picnic.
The same cynic might argue that Olmert and the army chiefs were interested in a pretext in order to execute their war plans. They were convinced, anyhow, that the soldiers would be brought home in a jiffy. But, as the British royal motto says, Honi soit qui mal y pense - Shame upon him who thinks ill of it.
Anyhow, Hizbullah attacked, two soldiers were captured, and the planned operation should have started rolling smoothly. But that did not happen. The war did indeed break out, as planned, but from then on almost nothing went according to plan. Consultations were hasty, the decisions confused, the operations indecisive. It now appears that the plan was not yet finalized and confirmed.
The Vinograd commission is supposed to find the answers to some tough questions: If the war was planned such a long time in advance, why was the army not ready for war? How come the army budget was reduced? How come the emergency arsenals were empty? Why were the reserve forces, which were supposed to carry out the operations on the ground, called up only when the war was already in full swing? And after they were finally deployed, why did they receive confused and contradictory orders?
All these show that Olmert and the generals were grossly incompetent in their military decision-making. But they also lacked any understanding of the international scene.
Hassan Nasrallah has openly admitted that he made a mistake.
He did not understand that there had been a change in Israel: instead of Sharon, an old war-horse who was not looking for action in the north, a new man had arrived, an inexperienced politician itching for war. What Nasrallah had in mind was just another round of the usual: the capture of some soldiers and a prisoner exchange. Instead, a full-blown war broke out.
But Ehud Olmert's mistake was even bigger. He was convinced that the United States would give him a blessing for the road and allow him to roam in Lebanon at will. But American interests, too, had changed.
In Lebanon, the government of Fuad Siniora has succeeded in uniting all pro-American forces. They have loyally carried out all of Washington's orders, have driven out the Syrians and have supported the investigation of Rafiq Hariri's murder, which is to provide the Americans with a pretext for a massive strike against Syria.
According to Olmert's leaks, Condoleezza Rice called him just after the outbreak of the war and conveyed to him the up-to-date American orders : it was indeed desired that Israel should deal a crushing blow to Hizbullah, the enemies of (CIA-installed) Siniora, but it was absolutely forbidden to do anything that would hurt Siniora, such as bombing Lebanese infrastructure outside Hizbullah's territory.
That emasculated the General Staff's plans. The main idea had been that if the civilian population in Lebanon was hurt sufficiently, it would put pressure on the government to act decisively against Hizbullah, enough to liquidate the organization or, at least, to disarm it. It is very doubtful whether this strategy would have succeeded if it had been carried out, but because of the American intervention it was not carried out.
Instead of the massive bombardment that would have destroyed the basic industries and facilities, Halutz had to be satisfied - after Condeleezza's phone call - with bombing the roads and bridges that serve Hizbullah and the Shiite population (including the supply lines for Syrian arms to Hizbullahland.) The damage was extensive, but not sufficient to bring Lebanon to its knees - if that was at all possible. Apart from that, the air force succeeded in destroying some of the long-range missiles, but the short-range missiles were not hit, and it was those that created havoc among the population in northern Israel.
On the ground, the operation was even more confused. Only during the last 48 hours of the war, when it was already clear that the cease-fire was about to come into force, was the major offensive, in which 33 Israeli soldiers died, set in motion. What for? In his testimony, Olmert asserts that it was necessary in order to change some points in the UN resolution in Israel's favor. We know today (as we said at the time) that these changes were worthless and they remained on paper.
The intervention of Condoleezza Rice in the conduct of the war is interesting also in another respect. It sheds light on a question that has been engaging the experts for some time now: in the relationship between the United States and Israel, do American interests override Israeli, or is it the other way round?
This discussion came to a head when the American professors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, published their research paper, according to which Israel imposes on the United States a policy that is contrary to the American national interest. The conclusion upset many who believe the opposite: that Israel is but a small wheel in the imperial American machine. (I permitted myself to argue that both versions are right: the American dog wags its Israeli tail, and the Israeli tail wags the American dog.)
When Condoleezza Rice encouraged Israel to go to war but vetoed an essential part of the war plan, it seems that she proved the two professors wrong. True, Olmert got American permission for his war, which served American interests (the elimination of Hizbullah, which opposed the pro-American Siniora government, though it officially belonged to it), but only with severe limitations (in order not to hurt the Siniora government).
The same principle is now operating on the Syrian front.
Bashar al-Assad offers Israel peace negotiations without prior conditions. This way, he hopes to avert an American attack on his country. Like the two professors, he believes that the Israeli lobby rules Washington.
Almost all the important experts in Israel are in agreement that the Syrian offer is serious. Even in "security circles" some are urging Olmert to seize the opportunity and achieve peace in the north.
But the Americans have put an absolute veto on that, which Olmert has accepted. A vital Israeli interest has been sacrificed on the American altar. Even now, when Bush is already entering into some kind of a dialog with Syria, the Americans are prohibiting us from doing the same.
Why? Very simple: the Americans are using us as a threat. They hold us on a line, like an attack dog, and tell Assad: if you don't do as we wish, we shall release the dog.
If the Americans reach an agreement with the Syrians, using this threat among others, it is they who will garner the political profits from any accord we reach with Syria in the end.
That reminds me of the events of 1973. After the October war, Israeli-Egyptian cease-fire negotiations started at km 101 (from Cairo). At some stage, General Israel Tal took over as the chief of the Israeli delegation. Much later, he told me the following story:
"At a certain point, General Gamasy, the Egyptian representative, approached and told me that Egypt was now ready to sign an agreement with us. Full of joy, I took a plane and rushed to (Prime Minister) Golda Meir, to bring her the happy news. But Golda told me to stop everything immediately. She said to me: I have promised Henry Kissinger that if we arrive at an agreement, we shall transfer the whole matter to him, and he will tie up the loose ends."
And that is what happened, of course. The negotiations at km 101 were stopped, and Kissinger took control of the scene. It was he who reached the agreement, and the US was credited with it. The Egyptians became loyal followers of the US. The Israeli-Egyptian agreement was postponed for five years. It was achieved by Anwar Sadat, who planned his historic flight to Jerusalem behind the backs of the Americans.
Now the same may happen on the Syrian front. In the best case. In the worst case, the Americans will not reach an agreement with the Syrians, they will prevent us from achieving an agreement for ourselves, and thousands of Israelis, Syrians and Lebanese will pay the price in the next war.
usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/41549
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