MK Ophir Pines-Paz, who was a member of the cabinet when Israel went to war in Lebanon last summer, Sunday called for the immediate resignations of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz over the expected findings of the Winograd inquiry into the conduct of the war.

Pines-Paz, a candidate for the chairmanship of the Labor Party, currently headed by Peretz, told Army Radio that he had strongly critized the initial decision to go to war as an extreme over-reaction.

"The prime minister and the defense minister must stand up and accept responsibility and resign, and not just hang on," Pines-Paz said. "The price of that hanging-on is being paid by Israeli society and the state of Israel."

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According to Pines-Paz, Olmert refrained from bringiong before the cabinet his stipulation that the charter of the Winograd committee bars it from recommending that individual leaders resign over the panel's findings.

He praised wartime army chief Dan Halutz for resigning, and not having waited for the publication of the findings of the probe, which is expected to severely criticize Olmert for hasty, superficial, and "rubber-stamp" decision-making, and Peretz for failing to take steps to compensate for his near-absolute lack of experience in the defense realm.



In response, an Olmert associate said, "He was a member of the cabinet. Why didn't he (Pines-Paz) resign? He resigned because Lieberman joined, not because of the war."

But Pines-Paz said the conduct of the war, and his criticism of it as leveled within the cabinet, was one of the reasons for his resignation.

The leak of sections of the Winograd Committee interim report has caught Olmert's people in the midst of preparations for the publication of the report and has put them in an inferior position in the media arena in which the battle for public opinion is being waged that will decide Olmert's political future.

Sources close to Olmert have said the prime minister and his associates will not respond to the portions of the Winograd Committee interim report broadcast last night on Channel 10.

"This is a tactical problem," a source close to Olmert conceded Saturday night.

Meretz chairman MK Yossi Beilin has already called for Olmert's resignation. "If after publication of the report by the committee he himself set up at his convenience Olmert stays in office, the public in Israel will lead him out of it," he said.

Olmert's advisers intend to reiterate Sunday, after the interim report is released, that the decision to go to war was taken by the entire cabinet, and was supported by the Knesset and the public.

MK Benjamin Netanyahu's (Likud) media adviser Ophir Akunis said, "Netanyahu and the Likud acted responsibly while Israel was in a military conflict. We backed the goals of the war, which unfortunately were not fulfilled."

The soft underbelly of Olmert's own Kadima Party is believed to be causing the prime minister more concern than the opposition. However, Olmert does not expect Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a challenger to his leadership, to come out against him soon.

Olmert's advisers, Ovad Yehezkiel and cabinet secretary Israel Maimon, have asked Kadima ministers and MKs to make themselves available to the media to support Olmert tomorrow after the report is released.