Support for Israeli Premier Amid Calls to Resign

"Israel/Palestine"

01/31/2008

By ISABEL KERSHNER
NY Times
Published: February 1, 2008


JERUSALEM — The prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, received crucial support from senior ministers of his own Kadima Party on Thursday, and leaders of a public campaign to oust him said they were not immediately planning mass demonstrations. Those developments improved Mr. Olmert’s chances of surviving a formal inquiry that found “grave failings” in the handling of the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was quoted as telling Kadima ministers that the government-appointed investigative commission’s findings were “harsh,” but that “we need to continue together — that is the meaning of taking responsibility.” Ms. Livni had called on Mr. Olmert to resign last May after the publication of a scathing preliminary report by the same commission.

While the preliminary report assigned personal responsibility to the prime minister and other political and military leaders, the final report, released Wednesday, was more forgiving of Mr. Olmert than many expected and has been hailed by some supporters as a kind of exoneration.

Even before its release, Mr. Olmert made it clear that he had no intention of resigning.

Other ministers who had been critical of Mr. Olmert rallied around him on Thursday. Ronnie Bar-On, the finance minister and a close ally of Mr. Olmert, said the prime minister had “wall-to-wall support” within his party.

Both the preliminary and final reports were prepared by the Winograd Commission, named for the retired judge, Eliyahu Winograd, who headed it.

The 34-day war against Hezbollah ended without Israel achieving its goals of bringing back two soldiers seized in the cross-border raid that set off the war and of destroying Hezbollah, which continued to bombard northern Israel with rockets until a cease-fire was put into effect.

Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the opposition Likud Party, said Thursday that Mr. Olmert had “failed in war” and “was running away from responsibility.”

But Mr. Olmert’s political fate now depends mainly on Ehud Barak, defense minister and leader of the Labor Party, a major partner in the governing coalition. Mr. Barak and his allies are not expected to announce their plans before Sunday. If Labor does pull out of the coalition, Mr. Olmert’s government will be left without a parliamentary majority.

Polls published Wednesday and Thursday indicated that a majority of Israelis thought Mr. Olmert should resign, though in lesser numbers than those who thought so after the preliminary report’s release last spring.

Amnesty International criticized the Winograd Commission on Thursday, saying that it “made no serious attempt to investigate violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes, committed by Israeli forces.”

Israel has been censured by international human rights groups for what they said was a failure to discriminate between the Lebanese civilians and Hezbollah combatants, who often operated from villages during the war.

Amnesty concluded that of about 1,190 Lebanese killed, “the vast majority were civilians not involved in the hostilities, among them hundreds of children.” More than 160 Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed in the war.

The Winograd report, more than 600 pages long, deals generally with issues of international law. But in an implicit criticism of the army, it recommends a re-evaluation of the rules governing the use of cluster bombs.

Cluster bombs are not prohibited in war, but their use is questioned because they contain “bomblets” that explode over a wide area and may strike unintended targets.

The Winograd report found no evidence that the army had “knowingly” violated international laws in its use of cluster bombs. But it points to an “obtuseness” in the army regarding the terms of their use, particularly against military targets in areas where residents had fled but were likely to return.