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Olmert's war policy / What did Olmert and Peretz discuss? By Avi Isaacharoff and Amos Harel Tags: Labor, Winograd Committee  The transcripts that people close to the prime minister gave Nahum Barnea of Yedioth Aharonoth - and used in his story on Friday - represent the most extensive defense published to date of Ehud Olmert's reasons for embarking on a large ground operation during the final 60 hours of the Second Lebanon War. Three days before the release of the final Winograd Committee report, this is yet another stage of the holding action being fought by the prime minister against calls for his resignation. The leaks from the committee suggesting that the report may be less critical of Olmert than the interim report are not enough to restore calm in the Prime Minister's Bureau, where all guns are blazing. Parts of Olmert's version have already been published, in articles and books, but never this way; never in such data and descriptive fashion. However, the new information does not necessarily help to reconstruct the events at the end of the war. At times it seems the plethora of trees hides the forest. The transcripts document important conversations between Olmert and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and between his chief of staff, Yoram Turbowicz, and the American head of the National Security Council, Stephen Hadley. But they are missing critical information to key questions. For example, when was the final draft of United Nations Security Resolution 1701 received in Israel, and when did Israel give its consent to the American draft of the resolution? Was it still possible to halt the progress of the forces? Advertisement The dispute over the necessity of the final operation has already been extensively discussed, but it is worthwhile to focus on the degree of accuracy in the prime minister's main argument. Olmert says that the operation was necessary to improve the content of the Security Council Revolution. Did the offensive have an impact? The U.S. and French ambassadors to the UN, who wrote the draft, claim that it did not. It could be argued that this is a matter of subjective impressions, but what about the facts that are difficult to dispute, like the timetable in the final hours before the offensive and the agreement of a resolution, on Friday, August 11? A thorough investigation of these documents shows that the final version of the draft resolution (the blue version, in UN terminology), was received by the Israeli delegation at UN headquarters in New York at 8:16 P.M. that Friday, Israel time. Four minutes later it was transferred to Jerusalem. On the ground in Lebanon, the military offensive was only in its initial stages. Most of the force of Division 162, which was sent to the Saluki River, was still waiting inside Israel. The first helicopter-borne deployments of another division only began landing troops at about 9:00 P.M., at which point Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told her American counterpart that "we have a deal." From the minute of its receipt, the blue version was not changed. Nonetheless, no order was issued to the forces to stop their advance. Therefore, this last battle changed nothing in the draft of the resolution. The draft of 8:16 P.M. is also the version that was approved by the United Nations six and a half hours later; the same version that Olmert boasts was an Israeli achievement. It is possible that the threat of a major ground operation that Friday pressured the U.S., France and Lebanon into agreeing to a version of the resolution that conformed more with Israel's aims. But Olmert's bureau is discussing the operation itself, not the threat to conduct it, as what influenced the draft of the resolution. This simply does not fit the timetable of events. After 8:16 P.M., there were intense telephone exchanges between Jerusalem, Washington and the UN headquarters, but contrary to the impression Olmert's aides seem to be trying to give, these conversations focused on when the cease-fire would go into effect, not on the content of the resolution. The transcripts also fail to offer satisfactory answers to another mystery, which all probes have failed to answer: What precisely was said between Olmert and his defense minister Amir Peretz in the afternoon of that fateful Friday? It is known that Peretz and the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff pressured Olmert to embark on the offensive. Olmert, who delayed the decision, finally authorized the operation. Olmert insists that concerns for his political fortunes did not play a factor in his decision. Is it possible that two people who spent most of their adult lives in politics did not discuss, even if it was not done in an explicit way, such a critical juncture in their careers? Bookmark to del.icio.us   Officer convicted A military court convicts an IDF officer who led troops in a West Bank rampage. A different Anne Frank A Dutch Jewish condemns the distribution of a postcard of Anne Frank wearing kaffiyeh.

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