Winograd report lauds Foreign Ministry's diplomatic role in war
Report: IDF over-dominant in decision making, Foreign Ministry not sufficiently included during war in Lebanon.
By Barak RavidIn its interim report released Monday, the Winograd Committee extensively addressed the Foreign Ministry's role and the fact that from the first few days of the war it prepared the diplomatic ground that led to Security Council Resolution 1701 that brought a cease-fire.
The report also warned against what it described as the army's excessively dominant role in the decision-making process in political-defense issues and stressed that the Foreign Ministry was not sufficiently included in the staff work during the war.
"During the past 18 months we were not invited to a single meeting held in the intelligence branch, nor during the war," a senior Foreign Ministry source said Tuesday. "No one asked us whether to bomb the Dahiya [a Hezbollah neighborhood in Beirut] or not. Each organization worked separately."
The directors meeting at the Foreign Ministry on Tuesday dealt entirely with the Winograd report. The department heads agreed that now is the time to "use" the committee's conclusions to strengthen the role of the ministry vis-a-vis the IDF, the Prime Minister's Office and the Defense Ministry.
One of the proposals called for a push to get a government decision that will enlarge the ministry's budget so it can broaden its public relations campaigns. Another proposal was to seek a government decision that would require ministry officials to participate in meetings on political-defense matters with the IDF.
The director general of the ministry, Aharon Abramovitch, will present Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and the prime minister with a formal proposal with the recommendations of the department heads.
The rise in the standing of the Foreign Ministry began even before the war. Foreign Minister Livni and Abramovitch recognized that they must improve their ability to operate vis-a-vis the National Security Council, the Defense Ministry and the IDF and develop a strong advisory body. At the crux of their effort was the strengthening of the Diplomatic Research Center - the main think tank of the Foreign Ministry.
The DRC was set up following the report of the Agranat Commission of Inquiry into the Yom Kippur War, in an effort to dilute the army's monopoly on intelligence gathering and to allow "intellectual pluralism."
In practice, during the three decades that have passed since the Agranat report, the DRC failed to become an organ of influence equal to Military Intelligence in affecting decision-making. The incident that changed this trend was the abduction of Gilad Shalit, which transformed the DRC into a critical resource for Livni. The Lebanon war only increased its importance.
Livni included officials from the DRC in all the diplomatic deliberations and was accompanied by its head, Nimrod Barkan, to meetings of the Knesset Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense.
|
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Foreign Ministry Director General Aharon Abramovitch attending a meeting of the Knesset State Control Committee in Jerusalem last month. (Tomer Appelbaum/BauBau) |
Why Facebook Connect?
Comment on Haaretz.com articles with your Facebook login, and share your thoughts on your own wall.
- Latest
- Most Viewed
- Most Rated
- Open all
It is interesting that the primacy of Defense over the Foreign Ministry was instrumental in failure against Hizbullah. This was duplicated in the U.S, with the Defense department, under Rumsfeld, over the State Department and the failure in Iraq. One must get one's political ducks in order before going to war.
Shlomo, sure she'll be a candidate for Pres in about another 20 yrs or so. Meanwhile she's got far more important roles to add to her resume.....eg PM etc.
Absolutely no basis for your speculations and your bad will towards Livni. During that damned war she was rushing around from one capital city to another, plus the UN, in order to placate the world about our debacle in Lebanon. Her performance was exemplary, despite all the odds against us.
The interim report is an embarrassment and puts to shame the notion that we have developed proper cabinet government in 59 years of statehood. The recommendations especially point out how far this has drifted. It reads like an eighth grade class in what to do for cabinet decisions. We have made a mockery of democracy and part of the reason is that we are very young still as a nation state and another part is that too few of us originated in countries that had deep rooted democratic traditions. As with so much about public life here this is all very surface. But when one politician proves by her acumen that she knows a thing or two about how to act properly, she deserves plaudits even if they are "B'Akifin". Not that its difficult to look good up against the rest currently.
For the sake of Israel. She is capable and she loves her Country more than the power such a position grants. At the opposite of Olmert and Peretz.
For the Israel's own interest, probably LIVNI will be an excellent leader to achieve peace with the WORLD.
Come on Haaretz: "Winograd report lauds Foreign Ministry"???? I don't think so, this is media manipulation at its worst!!! Just because the report does not rip Livni appart, does not mean, she gets laudatio. So, please Haaretz: We all want Livni, but stop your bias and stop your anti-Olmert campaign. You are loosing public trust!
In retrospect Olmert did Livni a favor by not including her in his inner sanctum dealings. It actually helped her to preserve her naturally clean image. It becomes clearer by the day how he fears her as a successor, and that he will fight tooth and nail to prevent that. Olmert becomes uglier by the day.
The only conclusion from the report is that Tzipi was hiding and didn't do much so that she will not have any liability for the war's outcome. She even mobilized Bibi to explain Israel to the world instead of doing her job.
and set obligatory knowledge commucations from branch to branch and obligatory sharing decision meetings , improve procedures , set a foreign ministry work evolution , revolution