In the hours that followed Hizbullah's massive missile barrage against Israel Sunday, which left 15 dead and more than 150 wounded, many voices expressed the hope and expectation that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the IDF General Staff would finally approve a military campaign aimed at destroying Hizbullah's capacity to attack Israel. It was anticipated that they would finally authorize the IDF's plan to advance ground forces to the Litani River and take the necessary measures in Tyre, Sidon and other cities to wipe out Hizbullah's capacity to launch missiles against Israel.
But Olmert would have none of it. In the aftermath of the carnage in Kfar Giladi and Haifa, he continued to maintain that Israel had already won the war, and that the best way to end the conflict was to accept a Security Council resolution that would enable Hizbullah - the advance guard of the Iranian army of jihad - not only to survive as a fighting force, but to declare victory against Israel.
OLMERT TODAY devotes his attention not to addressing the question of how Israel can win this war, but rather to how he can convince the Israeli public that he is not a failure. And he is not alone. Over the past week or so the main push of the Olmert government, the IDF General Staff and the left-wing establishment in Israel has been to prepare the public to accept their version of events.
All three groups have their own specific agenda. But their goal - maintaining their power and evading accountability for their leadership failures - is a shared one.
Olmert and his colleagues are pushing three ideas to advance their claims of competence. First, they claim that Israel has already won the war. They back up this claim by pretending that the draft UN Security Council resolution is a success, and that a multinational force will protect us.
Second, they pretend that the Palestinian jihad against Israel is unrelated to the Lebanese jihad against Israel and that, as a result, their plan to transfer control over Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians remains sound. To this end they continue to support Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas even as he openly praises Hizbullah and his own security forces participate in terrorist attacks against Israelis. Moreover, they ignore the fact that Hizbullah terrorist-in-chief Hassan Nasrallah is the most popular figure in Palestinian society.
Finally, by preventing the ground offensive that all those IDF reserve divisions were called up to execute, they continue to pretend that the control of territory is unnecessary for national defense. After all, what is an air-based strategy other than a way to convince the public that wars can be won without land?
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