The Interim Winograd Report
That report found Olmert to have exercised poor judgment and poor decision-making skills. Referring to the cross-border incidents that provoked Olmert’s response, the commission wrote: “The decision to respond with an immediate, intensive military strike was not based on a detailed, comprehensive and authorized military plan, based on careful study of the complex characteristics of the Lebanon arena.”
Had the approach been more studied, the commission concluded, Olmert’s government would have known beforehand that Hezbollah counter-strikes would pummel northern Israel, that an effective military response to those strikes, short of a broad ground offensive that the Israeli public would not support, was not available, so military gains with political benefits were “limited.”
The commission added, “Consequently, in making the decision to go to war, the government did not consider the whole range of options, including that of continuing the policy of 'containment', or combining political and diplomatic moves with military strikes below the 'escalation level', or military preparations without immediate military action - so as to maintain for Israel the full range of responses to the abduction. This failure reflects weakness in strategic thinking, which derives the response to the event from a more comprehensive and encompassing picture.”
Olmert and Military Singled Out for Criticism
The commission named names: “The primary responsibility for these serious failings rests with the Prime Minister, the minister of defense and the (outgoing) Chief of Staff. We single out these three because it is likely that had any of them acted better - the decisions in the relevant period and the ways they were made, as well as the outcome of the war, would have been significantly better.”
Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz resigned. Olmert refused to follow. His approval rating, already low, plummeted, at one point reaching an almost invisible 3 percent. He was also the target of corruption inquiries. Before the release of the Winograd commission’s final report the evening of Jan. 30, 2008, Olmert vowed to stay in office regardless of the report’s conclusions or public sentiment.
The Final Report: More Muted Personal Criticism
That final report, while scathing, turned out to be less personally critical of Olmert than the interim report. The final report focused on the final days of the war, including the ground offensive. “Nonetheless,” the report warned, “it should be stressed that the fact we refrained from imposing personal responsibility does not imply that no such responsibility exists.” Rather, the commission refrained from laying personal blame because commissioners “believe that the primary need for improvements applies to the structural and systemic malfunctioning revealed in the war—on all levels.”
The result is a somewhat contradictory report that finds fault across the board but limits blame even as it criticizes the final ground offensive as little short of reckless and unwinnable. "Israel embarked on a prolonged war that it initiated, which ended without a clear Israeli victory from a military standpoint," Winograd said at a press conference the evening of the report’s release. "A paramilitary organization withstood the strongest army in the Middle East for weeks. … "These results have far-reaching consequences for us and our enemies… The ground operation did not reduce the Katyusha fire nor did it achieve significant accomplishments, and its role in accelerating or improving the political settlement is unclear.”
Despite those findings, Winograd defended the decision to launch the ground offensive. "There was no failure in the decision itself, despite the limited accomplishments and painful price," he said. "We are persuaded that both the prime minister and the defense minister operated out of a strong and honest assessment and understanding of what, to them, was seen as necessary for Israel's interests."
The Report’s Contradictions
That part of the commission report’s findings, however, clashes with the interim report’s conclusion that the context of the prime minister’s hurried decision-making, and the lack of proper study of the situation, would have “revealed the following: the ability to achieve military gains having significant political-international weight was limited; led to poor assessments of the situation.”
The final report also appears to contradict its own attempt to downplay the possibility of a “failure” in the decision to launch the ground offensive when it notes the following: “We have not found within either the political or the military echelons a serious consideration of the question whether it was reasonable to expect military achievements in 60 hours that could have contributed meaningfully to any of the goals of the operation; We have not found that the political echelon was aware of the details of the fighting in real time, and we have not seen a discussion, in either the political or the military echelons, of the issue of stopping the military operation after the Security Council resolution [ending the war] was adopted.”
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