Knesset Members Yuval Shteinitz (Likud), Aryeh Eldad (NU/NRP) and Effie Eitam (NU/NRP) attacked Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Thursday, for reportedly telling the Winograd Commission that he had prepared the plans for war in March 2006, four months before it broke out. The Winograd Commission is inquiring into the conduct of the government and military in the Second Lebanon War.
Shteinitz doesn't believe Olmert: "As head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, I was never shown documents, statements or intentions by the political echelon to prepare for war and neither were the subcommittees," Shteinitz insisted. "A country preparing for war does not cut security budgets, meaningfully decrease training on the ground and lower reserve call-ups. Olmert's testimony… has no real basis."
MK Eldad said that "even if we assume Olmert isn't lying, his situation is a thousand times worse after this statement. If this was the plan he okayed without checking if the Home Front was ready for implementation and the IDF was capable of carrying it out – he should be tried for criminal negligence."
Olmert told the commission headed by retired judge Eliyahu Winograd that he held a series of consultations regarding the situation in Lebanon, in January, March, April, and May and on June 25th (the day after the abduction on the Gaza border of Cpl. Gilad Shalit). In these sessions, he was presented with an abduction scenario similar to that which came to pass. Olmert told the commission he asked army commanders to present him with possible plans of retaliatory action and chose one that included an aerial campaign and a limited ground campaign. 
'If this was the plan he okayed without checking if the IDF was capable of carrying it out – he should be tried for criminal negligence'
Olmert said he had told the military representatives that he had no doubt Hizbullah would attempt an abduction, and instructed them to make an all-out effort to prevent it.
MK Eitam said Olmert played into Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah's hands when he said the war had been planned in advance.
"It turns out here that the Prime Minister and Nasrallah are coordinating their versions of what happened," Eitam said cynically. "This is precisely Nasrallah's claim, that Israel initiated the war, that the whole abduction matter was just an excuse," he explained.
Eitam said that Olmert's version was an attempt to duck responsibility for the faulty conduct of the war, and to rewrite history. "We remember the period before the war, in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee," he said. "We heard that military service would be shortened, we heard that there were no more existential threats to Israel." Eitam recalled a visit to the northern front in which OC Northern Command Udi Adam spoke of a problem that had to be dealt with and complained that decisions were not being made.
"To say that the IDF was prepared for a war in the north and that the Prime Minister intended to initiate a war is untrue," Eitam said. He said that Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz should resign at once.
Olmert also reportedly told the commission that the large-scale ground assault in the final days of the war was an attempt by Israel to influence discussions in the UN Security Council. Olmert had seen a Lebanese-French draft of resolution 1701 on the morning of the assault and thought it was not a good one for Israel.
Olmert's chief of staff, Yoram Turbowitz, told the commission that Israel refrained from destroying Lebanese infrastructure because US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asked Olmert "not to hurt Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Seniora."
Channel Ten reported yesterday (Thursday) that the Winograd Commission will delay, by four months, the release of its full report on last summer’s war against Hizbullah terrorists in