What Is Israel's Winograd Commission?

Question: What Is Israel's Winograd Commission?

From late 2006 to early 2008, Israel was gripped in soul-searching over, and reevaluation of, its 34-day war on Hezbollah in Lebanon in July-August 2006. Israel launched a devastating air assault on Hezbollah, then a ground assault. Neither achieved their objectives of destroying Hezbollah's military capabilities, including its ability to rain missiles on northern Israel.

It is traditional in Israeli politics that when something goes drastically wrong, a commission is appointed to study the case and provide findings and recommendations. What were the origins and scope of the Winograd Commission?

Answer: In January 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke. His deputy, Ehud Olmert, took over, and his party won a parliamentary election two months later, allowing Olmert to form a tenuous coalition government.

On July 12, following an ambush by Hezbollah militants from South Lebanon that kills eight Israeli soldiers and captures two, Olmert launches a devastating air war on Lebanon in an attempt to destroy Hezbollah’s rocket-launching capabilities and root out the militant army of about 4,500 from South Lebanon. But Olmert’s offensive is disorganized, ill prepared and lacks both strategy and objective. On Aug. 13, he launches a ground offensive that appears even more ill thought. A week later, after losing 33 soldiers, Israeli ground forces withdraw and the war is brought to an end through American mediation at the United Nations. Hezbollah’s capability to bomb Israel is virtually unchanged, and Hezbollah’s popularity in Lebanon soars. The two Israeli soldiers Hezbollah had captured were never returned.

Olmert faced intense criticism. Public pressure forced him to appoint an investigative commission in September 2006. The five-member commission was headed by Eliyahu Winograd, 79 at the time of his appointment, a retired Tel Aviv District Court judge who’d briefly served as acting Supreme Court judge. The panel becomes known as the Winograd commission.

The commission released a preliminary report in April 2007, focusing on what led up to the 34-day war and its early days. It released its final report on Jan. 30, 2008, in Jerusalem. Both reports were scathing in their conclusions regarding Olmert’s decision-making process, his strategic handling of the war and his apparent lack of clear objective or exit strategy. The reports were also critical of the Israeli military. But neither report aimed to lay blame—at least not primarily—so much as to analyze what went wrong in the 2006 war, and what the Israeli government, the military and society could do to fix it.

In the commissioners’ conclusive words, “We hope that our findings and conclusions in the Interim and the Final Reports will bring about not only a redress of failings and flaws, but help Israeli society, its leaders and thinkers, to advance the long-term goals of Israel, and develop the appropriate ways to address the challenges and respond to them.”