Daniel Levy-01/05/2007

Daniel Levy, (The Guardian)

"The Israeli Winograd Committee Report on last summer's Lebanon war was published today, and it presents Israel with something of a Blackadder moment. During the first world war series one of the recruits tells Captain Blackadder he had wanted to see how a war was fought badly, to which the Rowan Atkinson character replies: "Well, you are in the right place then. A war hasn't been fought this badly since Oluf, king of the Vikings, ordered 1,000 helmets with the horns facing down."

The 150-page interim report (which rather annoyingly contains no executive summary) describes a litany of mistakes leading up to and during the war, from logistics and planning, to preparedness, strategy and lack of options considered. The report is interim because it ends at day six of the war (in the good old days, they only used to last that long), with the final document, up to and including day 34, due in the summer. There is plenty of blame to go around and it is doled out in generous helpings to virtually every part of Israel's political and military establishment. Prime minister Olmert's management of the war is described as a "severe failure" and the media in Israel will discuss little else in the coming days.

Here are five comments that try to look beyond the immediate speculation.

First, the report is mainly about better wars, not fewer wars. Israel's elected leadership and its military have the duty to protect and defend the Israeli public. The Hezbollah raid across the border that ignited the conflict was an unprovoked act of aggression, but the ongoing political context of unresolved conflict should not be ignored. The vast majority of the public debate in Israel during and since the second Lebanon war has been about the failure to win wars, rather than the failure to avoid war and make peace. There was no committee of inquiry established to investigate the wasted five years since the Arab League launched its peace initiative in 2002 or the wasted year from Abu Mazen's election to the Palestinian presidency until the Hamas parliamentary election. And there is unlikely to be an investigatory commission into Israel's failure to respond intelligently to the opportunities presented by the Mecca-Palestinian unity government deal and the prospect it holds out for a comprehensive ceasefire. This is unfortunate. Israel's military is undoubtedly in need of a spring-cleaning, and it would be a healthy thing if the Israeli public's confidence in the military would be restored (preferably without the need for another war), but the real collection of cobwebs that needs dusting off is from the file entitled "Israel's diplomatic strategy".

Second, there are a few specific findings worth focusing on. The report does point out that Israel's military preparedness has suffered as a result of its ongoing role in the Palestinian territories: while the country's military is very practiced in occupation, it is ill-prepared for challenging, mobile warfare. Training schedules, logistical arrangements, reserve exercises and, most of all, the military mindset, have all become intifada-centric. In a book released just days before the committee report two top military correspondents concluded from their exhaustive research that the army's weak performance was, more than anything else, a consequence of years invested in suppressing the Palestinian intifada. The current generation of officers has military skills honed almost entirely during skirmishes in the territories. One could only hope that, among the myriad lessons Israel will be learning, the most obvious one will not be lost: end the occupation. The report, to its credit (and from what I've read so far, it is a serious document), does also question the limited use made of diplomatic and political efforts before and during the war, and the lack of a planned exit strategy."

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