Last update - 00:00 02/01/2008
Barak, on war report: I won't let the IDF become a scapegoat
By Haaretz Service
In the wake of a damning Knesset report on the army's handling of the Second Lebanon War, Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio on Wednesday that he would not allow the Israel Defense Forces to be turned into a scapegoat.
The report was released on Sunday by the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. Barak, who was not the defense minister during the war, said that the responsibility for the war's management lies with the political echelon, not with the military.
Regarding a potential large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip, which Israel has been threatening for months as a response to constant Qassam rocket fire, Barak said in the radio interview, "We are not looking forward to a large operation, but we won't recoil from it when it becomes necessary."
On IDF action in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Barak said that "the war on terror is very efficient... In the last year, there has not been one death within the Green Line. We remember years of two and three-digit numbers. A lack of weaponry won't be what stops terror. What stops it is deliberate work on the part of the Shin Bet [security service] and the IDF. Deployment in the field, and of course, the [separation] fence."
Barak refused to address possible progress on negotiations for the release of Gilad Shalit, the IDF soldier abducted from the Gaza border in June 2006. "Yesterday, I met with Noam, his father, and I meet occasionally with his mother. We are working day and night to speed up Gilad Shalit's return, and it's preferable not to talk about it because my words don't contribute to his return, but are rather likely to inadvertently delay it."
On speculation that Barak will pull Labor out of the government coalition following the release of the Winograd Commission's report on the government's management of the war, the defense minister gave no definite answers.
"I will sit quietly and think what the right thing to do is from the perspective of the state, and how to do it, and when I decide, I'll do it. There's no place for all this drama," he said.
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