Vice Premier Shimon Peres on Thursday night downplayed comments he made to the Winograd Committee, which is investigating the handling of the Second Lebanon War, saying that his comments that he would not have entered the conflict were taken out of context.

In statements to the panel released earlier in the day, Peres said that he would not have gone to war in Lebanon in response to the abduction of two Israel Defense Forces soldiers by Hezbollah.

"Very partial segments of the transcripts were released," Peres said Thursday night. "When I was asked by the committee why I did not vote against [the war] I said that saw a prime minister conducting things in difficult days and I commend him for that, and it is my duty as a citizen to enable him to carry out his duty and express my reservations but support him without hesitation, and my support continues to this day."

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The vice premier told the panel that, "If it were up to me, I wouldn't have gotten into this war."

"If it were up to me, I also wouldn't have made a list of objectives for the war," he added. "We had no objectives, because we did not start the war. We were attacked and needed to defend against the attack. That's it."

"If you say the primary objective is to free captives, then in essence you are putting yourself at your enemy's mercy," continued Peres. "Why say something like that?"

In addition to Peres' testimony, the Winograd Committee authorized the publication Thursday of the testimonies of Major General (res.) Amos Malka, who headed Military Intelligence from 1998-2001, and Emergency Economic Authority head Brigadier General Arnon Ben-Ami.

The testimonies given by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz to the Winograd Committee will be made public before the Passover holiday begins on April 2, according to a High Court of Justice ruling issued Thursday.

In his testimony to the committee, Peres criticized the decision making process during the war, saying one of the problems was that the IDF did not bring its proposals directly to the seven senior ministers who served on the special wartime cabinet, but rather ran them by Olmert and Peretz first.

"[Olmert and Peretz] came to [to the cabinet] with a focused proposal, and it was very difficult to change their minds," said Peres. "And therefore things unfortunately fell through the cracks. I would have brought the chief of staff and others directly to the seven [ministers]."

"That doesn't mean the prime minister can't hold deliberations beforehand or afterwards, but he does in my opinion need to avoid making decisions," continued the vice premier. "If he, the defense minister and the chief of staff come with a unified position, the deliberation loses much of its effectiveness."

The vice premier said he believes that the IDF was not prepared for war. "I think the army entered this war tired, because it was situated in a war that wasn't a war, that had no glory or victories," he told the committee. "It was an effort to prevent a disaster, and that is exhausting."

The results of the war, said Peres, were exceptionally difficult. "Israel is no longer what it always was, it's not glowing, not surprising, not creative," he said. "We lost some of hour international deterrence, we are considered weaker than what we were and we have lost deterrence regarding the Arabs. This is expressed in signs of de-legitimization of Israel's existence."

Nonetheless, the vice premier said that "it can't be said that the war failed, because at the end of the day the Hezbollah can't explain why it went to war - not even to its own people."

Peres stressed that the failure in the war was largely psychological, because "Hezbollah was blessed with a spokesman who is not untalented - [Hezbollah cheif Hassan] Nasrallah," while in Israel, "everyone attacked each other endlessly."

Peres was asked regarding the events of July 12, the day on which IDF soldiers Eldad Regev and Udi Goldwasser were abducted by Hezbollah, but his response was emitted from the published protocols due to security reasons, along with several other large segments of his testimony.

Peres said Thursday in response that the testimony included "things I though I should say to government ministers and the prime ministers. [The committee] asked me why I didn't vote against [the war], and I told the committee that I saw how the prime minister was running things in those difficult days, and I solute him for it."

Speaking in Olmert's presence, Peres added that it is "my obligation as a citizen to allow him to carry out his duties, to express my doubts to him, but to support him without hesitation."

Peres added that his support for Olmert "continues to this day. I hear the criticism, but I know how difficult it is to run a small country with so many problems. The prime minister was elected to do this and we need to let him do his job in the best possible manner."

Former MI chief: IDF atrophied due to excessive attention to Palestinians

Former Military Intelligence head Major General (res.) Amos Malka said in his testimony to the Winograd Committee that the IDF "atrophied for four-five years" prior to the Second Lebanon war, due to "excessive attention to one issue alone - the Palestinians."

Malka said that training was not adequately funded, and that when the war broke out, the senior command acted as if the army was involved in a routine security operation in the territories, and not a much larger campaign.

Malka said that effectively the National Security Council "doesn't exist today, and it never existed. I sat in cabinet meetings for four years, and there was no discussion in which the head of the National Security Council sat the table. He always sat on the back benches."

The former MI chief also harshly criticized the decision-making process in the Prime Minister's Office over the past several years. "Generally the political echelon comes to discussions like [the one on July 12] as if it is coming for a visit," he said. "It comes with nothing of its own, no headquarters, no one to prepare paperwork, without holding discussions in advance, and the army pretty much runs the deliberation."

"Generals usually do not recommend ending the fighting," added Malka. "It is hard to imagine a general who is currently in the midst of fighting recommending that the political echelon stop [the war]. I saw chiefs of staff while I was the MI head during the conflict with the Palestinians, who often said: I'll advance, and if the political echelon wants - let it stop me."

Malka hinted that had he been at the center of the decision-making process during the war, he would have been satisfied with a week-long operation. Nonetheless, he said that under certain circumstances it would have been possible to carry out a large-scale ground operation, had decisions been made in advance and a large enough force been dispatched.

He added that at not time was the army ordered to deal with the Katyusha rockets in a thorough manner.

Malka, who headed Military Intelligence during the withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, said Nasrallah's speech in which he said Israel could be destroyed as easily as a spider web set the tone in terms of how the Arab world viewed the pullout. He said that the MI assessment at the time was that the Middle East "was reading Nasrallah's messages more than [former prime minister] Ehud Barak's."

Malka added that the intelligence assessment held that the withdrawal would impact the Palestinian arena, although it cannot be said that the withdrawal led to the outbreak of the second intifada.

"To anyone who tries to say that this is what caused the second intifada, I say that he is making irresponsible remarks," he said. "But it certainly added fuel and a tail wind to processes that were foreseen."

The former MI chief said that Barak's policy of withdrawing to the international border gave Israel no meaningful influence on what happened north of the border, contributing to Hezbollah's rearming after the withdrawal.

"We knew and believed that Hezbollah would bring Katyushas south of the Litani [river]," he said. "It was completely clear ... that Hezbollah would deploy to the border fence."

He confirmed that the Military Intelligence did have general information regarding Hezbollah's intent to kidnap IDF troops at Har Dov a few weeks before the organization abducted three soldiers in October 2000.


Head of Emergency Economic Authority slams government
The testimony of Brigadier General Arnon Ben-Ami, head of the Emergency Economic Authority, exposed the government's ineptness in handling the home front.

At the hearing, panel members focused on the government's decision not to authorize the authority to operate despite the home front's difficult situation. Instead, an ad-hoc body called the national management center was operated, headed by Prime Minister's Office Director General Ra'anan Dinur.

Ben-Ami said that the decision not to activate the Emergency Economic Authority was made by the prime minister, and that he believes it was based on psychological considerations.

The officer quoted a statement by a Prime Minister's Office representative made two weeks before the war broke out: "Any declaration of a state of emergency in Israel would give the Israeli public the wrong message, and would activate a body that is not suited for the task for which it was established - the Emergency Economic Authority was set up for making decision such as whether to allocate fuel to airplanes, the military industries or to civilians. This is simply not our situation," the representative said.

Ben-Ami was replying to a question by the committee's chairman Justice (ret.) Eliyahu Winograd, who said "there was a feeling that no central body managed the home front, if anyone managed it at all, and that voluntary organizations entered that vacuum and handled as much as they could, doing a marvelous job."

"I wonder, an organization exists for years and years, you train, you have representatives, ties, communication system, and lo and behold, they come along to this war, improvise, set up a new system and replace the one that trained all these years, what happened here?" asked panel member, Major General (res.) Menachem Einan.

The Emergency Economic Authority chief said also that the body's job is not to take care of civilians' welfare, but to ensure basic products and services are supplied. "I'm not responsible for the single civilian, irrespective of his financial status ... I'm only responsible for making sure that the state or the Emergency Economic Authority allow essential services to function."

In response, panel member Prof. Ruth Gavizon said "but what if that civilian cannot afford to buy those services?" Ben-Ami replied, "That's not up to me, his local authority is responsible for that."