Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi took over as the 19th Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Wednesday morning, replacing Dan Halutz. Ashkenazi said during the handover ceremony that the IDF is ready to implement the lessons of the second Lebanon war.

The handover ceremony at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem was attended by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Moshe Kaplinsky, former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon, as well as lawmakers and public figures.

Halutz resigned in January following widespread criticism of his handling of the second Lebanon war last summer.

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Ashkenazi said he "feels like the cantor during Yom Kippur prayers, excited and flustered and aware of how great the responsibility is."

The new IDF chief said the army must now turn its attention to making itself better, saying IDF soldiers in Lebanon proved their valor and devotion to the mission, and that these values must be preserved as well as necessary improvements made.

"The IDF is a people's army, and it must be preserved as such," added Ashkenazi.

Speaking at the ceremony, Peretz praised Ashkenazi, saying: "You are endowed... with professional excellence."

"There is no responsibility greater than that which is now placed on your soldiers," continued the defense minister.

"There is no honor higher than commanding the Israel Defense Forces, but it will not leave you one day of grace, because the tasks are urgent and pressing and essential like no others."

Speaking at the ceremony Wednesday, Halutz said that his one regret was that he had not managed to secure the release of the three captured IDF soldiers - Gilad Shalit who has been held by Palestinian militants in Gaza since June, and Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, whose July 12 abduction by Hezbollah sparked the summer war.

Halutz admitted that during the second Lebanon war, "along with successes in the fighting, mistakes were made, on my part as well."

"As I understand my responsibility, I fulfilled it, I asked the prime minister to end my service," continued Halutz. "Responsibility is not blame. The culture of discourse, inflammatory statements, and leaks as the expression of the concept of responsibility is a destructive culture."

Halutz said that if the IDF wanted to maintain and develop high-quality officers, they must be allowed to make mistakes. "Responsibility has many faces, among them the possibility to err," he said. "If we want good people to continue and tie their fate to the IDF, we must be patient and tolerant of their mistakes as well, given that they are reasonable."

The outgoing IDF chief added that the army has completed its inquiries into the war, saying "I now wonder about the national inquiry."

Olmert also praised Halutz, with the prime minister saying that the second Lebanon war yielded many achievements, and dramatically changed the security situation in the north.

The prime minister praised Halutz's decision to "see through the inquiries into the war to the end," calling Halutz an "example of responsibility and integrity."

"History will return what the public atmosphere was taken from you," Olmert told Halutz. "The circumstances that led you to resign, cannot diminish any of your virtues, achievements, and personal contribution to the security of the country."

Addressing the country's citizens, Olmert added: "Let's not lend a hand to those who wish to turn the IDF into a punching bag."

Additional ceremonies will be held throughout the day Wednesday to mark the handover.

Ashkenazi was drafted in 1972 to the "Golani" infantry brigade, where he served both in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the 1976 Entebbe rescue operation. In 1987 he was appointed commander of the Golani brigade, and in 1998 appointed GOC Northern Command, where he oversaw the final years of Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon and the withdrawal of IDF troops in May 2000.

In 2002, Ashkenazi was appointed deputy chief of staff, and retired in 2005 after being passed up for the position of IDF chief.