Last update - 00:00 13/11/2006
Pressure mounts on Halutz to 'take responsibility' for war
By Amos Harel and Nir Hasson, Haaretz Correspondents
Two prominent ex-generals, turning up pressure on IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, indicated Monday that Halutz should "take responsibility" for the military's failures in the recent Lebanon war, following the example of former divisional commander Gal Hirsch, who resigned on Sunday.
They spoke after Halutz Sunday largely rejected the findings of one of the committees that he himself appointed to investigate the army's conduct during the war.
Uri Segui, former chief of military intelligence, hinted in an Army Radio interview that the weight of responsibility for the blunders of the war fell on Halutz' shoulders.
"I'm skeptical that the leadership that the IDF has today is capable of rehabilitating the army and bringing it to the point at which it needs to be," Segui said.
According to Segui, the central question that former generals have asked Halutz was "after all that has happened, if he really thought that he could continue to direct the army" - adding that the question was, in fact, a rhetorical one.
Reserve major general Avigdor (Janush) Ben-Gal, former commander of Israel's northern front with Lebanon and Syria, was more pointed in his criticism, saying that Halutz had "sinned the sin of arrogance."
Referring to a widely quoted Halutz statement after the war, Ben-Gal said that the IDF had not scored a "victory on points" in Lebanon, rather the army had suffered a defeat that amounted to a "knock-out."
According to Ben-Gal, when Halutz, who spent his military career in the air force, was advised as a new army chief to rebuild the IDF's ground forces, he ignored the recommendations.
Instead, dismissing suggestions that he did not know enough about the IDF's armor, artillery, and infantry, "he emphasized again and again that to be a shepherd, you don't first need to be a sheep. Is that not arrogance?"
Ben-Gal praised Brigadier General Gal Hirsch's decision to resign in the wake of the recent, and indicated that he believed that Halutz was remiss in not having quit as well.
In Ben-Gal's view, halutz "does not behave like a commander. He acts like a chairman of the board of directors. He doesn't have the fire in his belly, in his chest. He doesn't have the quality of a senior military leader, he doesn't have the leadership, he doesn't have the professionalism."
"It cannot be that a senior divisional commander goes, and above him, everyone is complacent, living in an ivory tower."
In the end, ben-Gal told the radio, "Halutz will straighten up in time and understand that he cannot rehabilitate the army after the failure."
But former IAF major general Ran Goren, coming to Halutz' defense, warned against a wave of "beheadings" among IDF brass.
"I don't think a chief of staff should have to lay his head down on a platter before the governmental echelon."
"There is system-wide responsibility that must be investigated, and, in the end, there may perhaps be recommendations (for dismissal)." However, "we have no other General Staff, we have no other army, and this is our country."
Halutz rejects findings of IDF probe
The military investigative committee, headed by Major General (reserves) Doron Almog, was set up to examine the IDF's functioning during the period leading up to Hezbollah's July 12 kidnapping of two soldiers, which sparked the war.
Its findings were sharply critical of IDF activity at all levels during this period, from the soldiers in the field to the General Staff. But Halutz rejected all of the criticisms aimed at officers above the level of divisional commander and demanded that Almog reexamine his findings on these issues.
Shortly before the committee submitted its findings, Brigadier General Gal Hirsch, commander of the Galilee Division (Division 91), preempted one of its expected conclusions by submitting his resignation. The two kidnapped soldiers were in Hirsch's division, and Almog had warned him a week ago that he would probably recommend his ouster.
One of Almog's main findings was that the abduction could have been prevented had the IDF acted appropriately. During the three weeks that the kidnapped reservists' company spent on the Lebanese border, he charged, no company mission was executed in an orderly fashion, and the patrol from which the soldiers were abducted set out "almost as if [the soldiers] were going on a hike."
That patrol, he noted, was initiated by one of the kidnapped soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser, who commanded one of the patrol jeeps.
But most of Almog's criticism was aimed at senior officers, including Hirsch, the General Staff and even Halutz. He lambasted the gap between the plans that Hirsch drafted and their partial implementation in the field, noting that the plans themselves were excellent, and had Hirsch ensured that they were carried out, this could have prevented the kidnapping. He also charged that the General Staff had not treated a Military Intelligence warning with appropriate seriousness. That warning, issued in December 2005, predicted that Hezbollah would increase its efforts to kidnap soldiers along the border and that the coming year would bring an escalation in the North.
A shouting match
It was this criticism of the General Staff that particularly upset Halutz during the General Staff's meeting on the report Sunday morning. While he accepted the Almog Committee's conclusions about the Galilee Division, Halutz rejected those relating to the General Staff, the Ground Forces Command and the Northern Command and demanded that Almog "fill out" the investigation and submit his new findings in another few weeks. At times, said people who were present, the discussion deteriorated into shouting matches.
Defense Minister Amir Peretz joined Halutz in rejecting Almog's conclusions about the General Staff and demanding clarifications.
Almog did not make any specific recommendations about the officers above Hirsch, but indirectly fingered Halutz by stating "responsibility in the army begins with the person who heads it, especially on strategic matters."
Hirsch, in his resignation letter, also implicitly criticized his superiors. While accepting responsibility for what happened in his division, he added: "I believe it would be right to conclude that concrete responsibility for the errors, the missteps and the failures falls not only on the forward units and their commanders. There is responsibility that should properly be taken by the senior echelons."
And some General Staff officers predicted that Hirsch's resignation would refocus attention on Halutz's responsibility. "It is no longer possible to foist everything off on the divisional commanders," said one.
But while Almog mainly blamed the IDF for the kidnapping, he also argued that the army was in a poor opening position on the northern border, because successive governments had been determined to avoid escalation in the North at all costs, and therefore failed to allocate enough resources to the North.
Hirsch is expected to be replaced by Brigadier General Imad Fares. He has offered to stay on until Fares is ready to take over.