Israel's commission of inquiry into last year's Lebanon War will not recommend that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resign, despite censuring his government's handling of the campaign, an Israeli newspaper said yesterday.
The Winograd Commission, which accused Olmert in an April interim report of lacking "judgment, responsibility and prudence" in his decision to go to war against Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, has been expected by many of the government's critics to call for his ouster in its conclusions.
But the Yedioth Ahronoth daily, citing sources on the five-member panel of jurists and ex-generals, said the final report would stop short of "drawing personal conclusions" that could give formal imprimatur to public demands that Olmert quit.
"It is the public that should judge its elected representatives, at the ballot box," commission head Eliahu Winograd told Yedioth.
The newspaper said the panel's conclusions would be published in December.
A Winograd Commission spokesman declined comment.
Olmert, who unlike several of his predecessors lacks a military pedigree, has argued that the war improved Israel's security by banishing Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah from its frontier strongholds and boosting a UN peacekeeper force.
But Hezbollah managed to fire 4,000 missiles into northern Israel, driving a million residents to shelters and shaking the Jewish state's belief in its military superiority in the region.
Olmert, whose wartime defense minister and armed forces chief resigned in disgrace, has vowed to survive the Winograd Commission reports' fallout and serve out his term in office.
Israeli Vice-Premier Haim Ramon welcomed the Winograd Commission's reported reprieve, saying it would help Olmert keep together his fractious coalition government as he prepares for a US-led peace conference with the Palestinians next month.
Source: China Daily/agencies
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