Last update - 00:00 09/10/2006
Army inquiries into Lebanon war will lead to personnel changes
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent
If the Israel Defense Forces keeps to the original timetable set by Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, the inquiry into the Lebanon war will hit its first major milestone as early as the end of next week. That is when the administrative investigations' interim findings into the performance of the four divisions that fought in the North are to be submitted.
Halutz said recently at closed IDF forums that he intends to begin a round of new senior IDF appointments shortly. The first discussion of appointments for brigadiers general is scheduled for October 30.
The assumption is that the investigations on the divisional level will lead to personnel changes for some of the officers involved. The October 30 meeting may end up taking decisions that will be implemented within a few months rather than dealing with appointments that will go into effect only next spring, as is usually the case.
In the wake of the harsh criticism that a number of senior reserve officers directed at Halutz in the weeks immediately following the war, he has made the right move. Halutz invited a few of his most notable critics to take an active part in the investigations at the two meetings he held with retired officers. Thus, for example, Maj.-Gen. Doron Almog (ret.) is heading the committee looking into the kidnappings (that set off the war), Maj.-Gen. Yoram Yair (ret.) is in charge of investigating the operational performance of Division 91 (particular in the Marun al-Ras and Bint Jbail battles), while Maj.-Gen. Moshe Ivri Sukenik (ret.) is coordinating the inquiry into Division 162, whose major battle was at Wadi Saluki.
Halutz not only recruited these retired officers for the mission to rehabilitate the IDF but also gained the use of their knowledge and experience in order to apply the lessons of the war to the future. According to reports from the inquiries, the old timers are directing them with an iron fist. Sukenik, a former commander of the IDF's ground forces, has had some choice words about Division 162's commanding officers on more than one occasion. Officers in the Central Command, however, say his command of the material at hand, particularly when it comes to the pursuit of armored fighting, is obvious at every level. People close to Sukenik say he approached the inquiry with a fighting spirit. His son served as a reserve duty tank platoon commander during the war, in another division, and Sukenik Sr. was shocked by the stories his son related.
The seniority and experience of the retired generals also affects their perspective on the fighting, however. People involved in the Division 91 investigation say that Yair rode the division commanders very hard with his questions concerning their failure to conform to the timetable handed down to them. Why, he asked repeatedly, did such-and-such battalion not reach the village at the appointed time? Yair, who served in both the 1973 war and the 1982 Lebanon War, was not impressed by their explanations that they weren't facing a Syrian or Egyptian division and the decision to postpone an attack could be a legitimate one when the enemy is a guerrilla organization that is not seeking engagement in battle.
By early December all the internal IDF investigations are to be completed. The government commission of inquiry into the conduct of the war, the Winograd Committee, is expected to accelerate its work, but it nevertheless seems that Halutz will not wait for it before making his own decisions, at least regarding the divisional commanders.