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As fighting fades, political spats heat up

Postwar accusations fly, old investigations resurface in Israel, where several leaders are on the hot seat

BY MICHAEL ROTHFELD | Newsday Staff Correspondent

August 17, 2006

JERUSALEM - No sooner had the fighting quieted down in Lebanon this week than the sniping began on Israel's political home front. Much of it had little to do with the war.

On Tuesday, the day after the cease-fire with Hezbollah, Israel's military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, found himself facing questions and calls for his resignation over his decision to sell stock in the opening hours of the war.

Old investigations against two government officials - one for making political appointments and the other for sexual harassment - suddenly resurfaced.

And as many Israelis criticized the government's management of the war, Defense Minister Amir Peretz announced a fact-finding commission and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted mistakes had been made.

"We will not hesitate to check everything that requires checking; we will hide nothing and we will not cover anything up," Olmert told the Knesset, or parliament, Monday. "But we will not do it because of incitement or the leveling of accusations."

Although Israelis overwhelmingly supported the war, public opinion polls published here yesterday indicated the public was not happy with how it ended or with their leaders' performance. A Smith Research poll found that 62 percent of respondents felt Olmert had not handled the war well. In three separate polls, only a minority of Israelis - ranging from 18 percent to 44 percent - felt their country had won.

The sharpest fault lines are drawn around the fact that the government and the army did not launch a large ground offensive against Hezbollah until a month into the war, at the same time that it was accepting a United Nations-negotiated cease-fire resolution.

"We are paying the price now for not having done that in time," said Dan Schueftan, deputy director of the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa. "There is a perception, wrong as it may be, in the Arab world that the Arabs won because not being defeated conclusively by Israel is perceived as winning."

But for at least two days, recriminations over the war were nearly overshadowed by what the daily newspaper Haaretz called "The Halutz Affair." Another newspaper, Maariv, reported Tuesday that on July 12, three hours after two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah, Halutz called his broker at Bank Leumi and ordered the sale of stock worth about 120,000 shekels, or nearly $27,000. After the war started, the market plunged, but it has since recovered.

The sale, which occurred as Israel had begun attacking Lebanon - on a day eight Israeli soldiers died - was not a crime, but it was considered in bad taste.

"It's embarrassing," said Uzi Dayan, a retired Israeli general and former national security adviser. "He should have said, 'Look, I'm sorry, it was a mistake,' because nobody thinks that he made money out of it. I think it will be very hard on him to continue now, because what we need now in Israel is leadership."

Halutz, a confident former fighter pilot and Air Force chief, brushed off calls for his resignation by members of the Knesset. He called the Maariv story "wicked" and explained he was just managing his money as he normally does.

"I think I genuinely became a punching bag as a result of the situation at the end of the war," he said. "I am willing to face off with anyone in the state of Israel over the ethics of my actions."

Halutz received some backup yesterday from Tzahi Hanegbi, a Knesset member who chairs the foreign affairs committee and called the criticism "despicable."

But Hanegbi himself is expected to be indicted by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz for making political appointments while he was the environmental minister.

After the war's conclusion, Israeli police also announced they'd finished an investigation of Justice Minister Haim Ramon, who is accused of kissing a government worker against her will at a Defense Ministry compound in Tel Aviv. The attorney general hasn't decided yet whether to indict him.

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Postwar accusations fly, old investigations resurface in Israel, where several leaders are on the hot seat

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