Israel failed to achieve all its objectives in its summer war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Israeli army chief admitted on Tuesday, but he rejected calls to resign as a result.
Summing up internal army inquiries into the war, which ended inconclusively in a ceasefire after 34 days of fighting, the army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, said Israeli forces caused considerable damage to Hezbollah and killed "hundreds of terrorists."
At a briefing for Israeli military correspondents carried by local TV channels, he added: "We were not successful in reducing the short-range rocket fire on Israel's north until the ceasefire."
Hezbollah fired approximately 4,000 rockets at Israel during the fighting. Israel pounded Lebanon with airstrikes at Hezbollah targets and infrastructure and ground forces swept through south Lebanon.
"We attacked the Katyushas [rockets], but unsuccessfully," he said.
"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 south Lebanese towns and villages.
He said these instances of refusal "ran counter to the army's basic values." He said a senior officer was suspended as a result.
Halutz said it would be a mistake to use the military now to try to free the two Israeli soldiers captured in a cross-border Hezbollah raid, which set off the fighting -- though that was one of the goals stated at the outset of the conflict.
Halutz, who is under pressure to stop down because of the shortcomings of the war, said he decided to stay on and "correct what can be corrected." He said resignation now would be "running away," adding: "I have not heard my superiors calling on me to resign. If they do, I will respond."
He noted conclusions of an inquiry by a former chief of staff that included vague definitions of goals and faulty work in command centers.
Halutz said that reserve soldiers would be called up for longer annual service to undergo better training and said a plan to shorten the length of regular service -- now set at three years -- would be delayed.
A committee appointed by the government is in the midst of its investigation of the war and its outcome.
The internal army inquiries did not call for resignations, but the government committee has the power to do so. Halutz said if that committee called for his resignation, "of course" he would comply. Defense Minister Amir Peretz has made the same pledge.
The conflict ended on Aug. 14 with a UN Security Council resolution that posted a reinforced peacekeeping force in south Lebanon with a mandate to keep the area clear of armed forces.
The fighting left more than 1,000 people dead, UN, Israeli and Lebanese officials said.
Lebanon's Higher Relief Council, a government group, said the majority of those were Lebanese civilians. UNICEF also says most of those killed were civilians and that about a third of them were children.
Of the total deaths, 159 were in Israel, including 39 civilians who were killed in rocket attacks.
Israel claimed 600 Hezbollah fighters were killed but that figure was not substantiated, with the group acknowledging only 250 of its fighters killed.
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS