Many pent up opinions: Mofaz
Photo: Niv Calderon
Mofaz: Investigate government, not army
Quiet support given by transport minister to colleagues during war has ended on Tuesday. Former defense minister: War could have ended in 10 days or less had we hit Hizbullah infrastructure hard enough
Up to now, Transport Minister and former defense minister Shaul Mofaz has refrained from criticizing decision makers during the Lebanon
war.
On Tuesday evening, during a closed meeting with 40 driving instructors, Mofaz gave vent hit thoughts, and shared the serious critiques he has built up for the past two months.
The 40 members who met at the yard of the one of the homes in Omer, near Beer Sheva, received a rare glimpse of the real views of the former defense minister and chief of staff.
"If we would have hit Hizbullah infrastructures hard, it could have ended in ten days or less, but this did not happen," Mofaz said. "I thought it would be short, strong, so that Hizbullah cry out, 'stop the Israelis – they've gone crazy.'"
Mofaz believes that the government erred in the way it set out, and ended the campaign. He added that the end of the campaign was an abandonment of the captives.
"I said that after the government accepted UN resolution 1701, it should at least declare that our sons be transferred to a third party, that the Red Cross come and visit them. That's also what Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, said when he came here on a visit," Mofaz said.
Addressing the burning issue of a commission of inquiry, Mofaz said the commission "must check the government and the politicians."
"I don't think it needs to check the army," he added.
Smiling with embarrassment when a member of the audience called out, "we didn't have a defense minister in the war," he responded: "I don't want to get into this, because the last time I said something similar, I was publicly attacked."
Mofaz mocked government attempts to market the war as a successful strike on Hizbullah. He said Hizbullah would recover within a year: "I suppose we won't hear from them in the coming year, but could the threat be realized again? The answer is yes."
