Professor Yehezkel Dror, member of the Winograd Commission which investigated the failures of the Second Lebanon War,
launched a frontal attack Thursday against Ehud Olmert,
clarifying that the prime minister has failed and cannot stay in office.
A year after the committee submitted its final report
into the war, Prof. Dror wrote in a harsh article published in the Jewish-American Forward weekly that such a situation would not be possible in any other parliamentary democracy.
"I was sure the prime minister would resign. It's amazing this hasn’t happened yet. This is not what I expected. It's beyond my nightmares," Dror told Ynet on Thursday morning.
"I regret the fact that as a member of the committee I did not insist that the report would include an institutional recommendation to the government and its head to resign following the findings."
The article included similar statements on explicit recommendations, and Dror noted that looking back, he had made a mistake in trusting the political system and the public to do what it took in light of the committee's harsh conclusions.
He said he did not expect such a behavior from the political system, which he said was derived from Knesset member's narrow political motives and career considerations.
Dror stressed that he was amazed by Olmert's insistence, noting that he had expected the government to resign after the interim report. He said that while IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz resigned and Defense Minister Amir Peretz was forced to leave office, the prime minister did not resign and was not forced to leave.
The professor went on to say that the changes in the army could not compensate for the ongoing weakness of the political echelon, which makes all the decisive decisions. He added that even an experienced defense minister could not cover up for a prime minister who lacks strategic thinking, regardless of his political wisdom.
Dror also expressed his criticism against Olmert in terms of the prime minister's recent conduct, which is not directly related to the war. He referred to Olmert's peace initiatives with Syria and the Palestinians as superficial maneuvers and even "a complete spin."
He explained that these initiatives lacked any deep, long-term and strategic thinking on the prime minister's part, which he said should be based on professional political-security staff work.
Talking to Ynet, Dror noted that he was extremely concerned about the future.
"In order to make difficult decisions in a democratic country – whether to divide Jerusalem or not, whether to evacuate settlements or not – one needs a lot of strength.
"All the public opinion polls show that the public has no faith in the prime minister and doesn’t believe him. My personal opinion is well known – in light of the lack of a strategic head during the war, I wouldn’t let the prime minister make important strategic decisions in regards to the future."
"I wouldn’t trust the prime minister because of what we saw during the Lebanon war and because of the failure to implement the required institutional repair – the establishment of a national security council," Dror concluded.
"As we are facing great challenges of the likes of Hamas, Iran and the kidnapped soldiers, I am definitely not calm, to put it mildly."
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