JERUSALEM - Israel failed to achieve all its objectives in its summer war
against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, the Israeli army chief said Tuesday,
but defied calls for his resignation.
Israeli soldiers rest next to an artillery piece at a
position near Kiryat Shmona, in northern Israel , next to the Lebanese
border, in this July 20, 2006, file photo. [AP]
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Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz told reporters at a
briefing that Israeli forces caused considerable damage to Hezbollah and killed
"hundreds of terrorists" in the war, which ended inconclusively in a cease-fire
after 34 days of fighting.
But Halutz, summing up internal army inquiries into the war, acknowledged the
army did not achieve all its aims. "We were not successful in reducing the
short-range rocket fire on Israel's north until the cease-fire," he said.
Hezbollah fired about 4,000 rockets at Israel during the fighting.
A government-appointed committee is investigating the war and its outcome,
and has the power to call for Halutz's resignation.
Halutz said he wants to stay on and "correct what can be corrected." His
resignation now, he said, would be tantamount to "running away."
"I have not heard my superiors calling on me to resign," he added. "If they
do, I will respond."
An inquiry by a former chief of staff found that the war's goals were vaguely
defined, Halutz noted, and that there was faulty work in command centers.
"There were cases in which officers did not carry out their assignments, and
cases in which officers objected on moral grounds to their orders," Halutz said,
an apparent reference to resistance against attacking southern Lebanese towns
and villages.
These incidents "ran counter to the army's basic values," he said, and a
senior officer was suspended as a result.
Halutz said it would be a mistake to try now to use the military to try to
free two Israeli soldiers captured in a cross-border Hezbollah raid ¡ª the
incident which triggered the war in the first place. Instead, Israel is trying
to recover the soldiers through diplomatic means.
In suggesting ways that Israel's forces might be strengthened, Halutz said
reservists could be called up for longer annual service and better training. The
government, he said, could also delay the implementation of a plan to shorten
the length of regular service, now set at three years.
The war with Hezbollah ended Aug. 14 with a UN Security Council resolution
that posted a beefed-up peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon. Their mandate is
to keep the area clear of armed forces.
The fighting left more than 1,000 people dead on both sides, according to the
UN, Israeli and Lebanese officials. Lebanon's Higher Relief Council, a
government group, says the majority of those killed were Lebanese civilians.
UNICEF said that about a third of them were children.
The fatalities included 159 in Israel, including 39 civilians killed in
rocket attacks.
Israel claimed 600 Hezbollah fighters were killed, but that figure has not
been substantiated. Hezbollah claims that only 250 of its fighters were
killed.