2. The Commission was appointed due to a strong sense of a crisis and deep disappointment with the consequences of the campaign and the way it was conducted. We regarded this difficult task both as a duty and a privilege. It is our belief that the larger the event and the deeper the feeling of crisis - the greater the opportunity to change and improve matters which are essential for the security and the flourishing of state and society in Israel. We believe Israeli society has great strength and resilience, with a robust sense of the justice of its being and of its achievements. These, too, were expressed during the war in Lebanon and after it. At the same time, we must not underrate deep failures.
3. This conception of our role affected the way we operated. No-one underestimates the need to study what happened in the past, including the imposition of personal responsibility. The past is the key for learning lessons for the future. Nonetheless, learning these lessons and actually implementing them are the most implications of the conclusions of the Commission.
4. This emphasis on learning lessons not only follows from our conception of the role of a public commission. It also follows from our belief that one of Israeli society's greatest sources of strength is its being free, open and creative. Together with great achievements, the challenges facing it are existential. To cope with them, Israel must be a learning society - a society which examines its achievements and, in particular, its failures, in order to improve its ability to face the future.
5. Initially we hoped that the appointment of the Commission would serve as an incentive to accelerate learning processes in the relevant systems, so that we could devote our time to study all of the materials in depth, and present the public with a comprehensive picture. However, learning processes have been limited. In some ways an opposite, and worrying, process emerged - a process of 'waiting' for the Commission's Report before energetic and determined action was taken to redress the failures that have been revealed.
6. Therefore we decided to publish initially an Interim Report, focusing on the decisions related to the start of the war. We did this in the hope that the relevant bodies would take urgent action to change and correct all the implications. We would like to reiterate and emphasize that we hope that this Partial Report, which concentrates on the functioning of the highest political and military echelons in their decision to move to war will not divert attention from the troubling overall picture revealed by the war as a whole.
7. The interim report includes a number of chapters dealing with the following subjects:
a. The Commission's perception of its role, and its attitude to recommendations in general and to recommendations dealing with specific persons in particular (chapter 2). We see the main task of a public commission of inquiry (or investigation) as determining findings and conclusions, and presenting them - with its recommendations - before the public and decision makers so that they can take action. A public commission should not, in most cases, replace the usual political decision-making processes and determine who should serve as a minister or senior military commander. Accordingly, we include personal conclusions in the interim report, without personal recommendations. However, we will reconsider this matter with regards to our Final Report, in view of the depiction of the war as a whole.
b. The way we balanced our desire to engage in a speedy and efficient investigation with the rights of those who may be negatively affected to 'natural justice' (chapter 3). The special stipulations of the Commissions of Inquiry Act in this regard do not apply to a governmental commission of Examination, but we regard ourselves, naturally, as working under the general principles of natural justice. The commission notified those who may be affected by its investigation, in detailed letters of invitation, of the ways in which they may be negatively affected, and enabled them to respond to allegations against them, without sending "notices of warning" and holding a quasi-judicial hearing before reaching out conclusions. We believe that in this way we provided all who may be negatively affected by our report with a full opportunity to answer all allegations against them.
c. The processes and developments in the period between the withdrawal of the IDF from Lebanon until July 11, 2006 which contributed to the background of the Lebanon War (chapter 4). These processes created much of the factual background against which the decision-makers had to operate on July 12th, and they are thus essential to both the understanding and the evaluation of the events of the war. Understanding them is also essential for drawing lessons from the events, whose significance is often broader than that of the war itself.
