Former IDF chiefs trade barbs over army's conduct in Second Lebanon War

The volley of accusations over the Israel Defense Forces' failures during the Second Lebanon War is continuing to stir up a storm: Two former IDF chiefs of staff have entered into a war of words, each charging the other with responsibility for failures by the army in its 2006 campaign.

Deputy Prime Minister and Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya'alon, who was IDF chief of staff from 2002-2005, said Saturday that his successor Dan Halutz was an excellent Air Force commander and deputy chief of staff, but that most of the damage caused during the Second Lebanon War was due "the sin of arrogance" committed by Halutz, the chief of staff from 2005 to the beginning of 2007.

"What happened with Dan Halutz was a tragedy," Ya'alon said, stressing the importance of humility for senior officers. "If we move away from this humility for one moment we're likely to find ourselves in a very bad place."

Halutz, who has avoided speaking out in public since he resigned after the war, yesterday issued a scathing response to Ya'alon's "obsession" with the matter in a rare interview with Army Radio.

"I think one of the central problems from which he consistently flees is the fact that he was the commander of the same army up until a year before the Second Lebanon War," Halutz told the station. "He forgot to mention this, as if it has been erased from his resume."

A state inquiry into the conflict, the Winograd Commission, found that both Israel's military and political leadership made grave errors during the war, which it called a "major missed opportunity."

In the Army Radio interview, however, Halutz noted that Israel had enjoyed almost four years of relative quiet in the north since the war.

Halutz, who resigned following heavy criticism in Israel for his role in the fighting, added: "I, unlike [Ya'alon], acknowledged my responsibility and brought the concept of responsibility to realization, as I understood it."

In a jab at the vague title of Ya'alon's position as strategic affairs minister, he said: "I want to wish him success in the matters of his ministry; by the way, I don't understand what they are doing there."