Israel general resigns in traffic accident scandal

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Israeli general in command of the Lebanon front against Hezbollah has resigned after he lied about a minor traffic accident, the army said Tuesday.

The story prompted a flood of media comment on those who lead Israel's youth in the conscript army -- not least because it was the second scandal this summer involving a commander covering up for a relative's driving.

The general who had been in charge of Israel's other most active front, with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, was court-martialled and demoted in June after lying about his under-age teenage son driving an army dune buggy which collided with a civilian car.

Late Monday, Brigadier General Imad Fares of the Northern Command resigned after "giving an unreliable account" of an incident involving his official car, the army said.

Newspapers that splashed the story on Tuesday's front pages Tuesday said Fares's wife had been driving the car alone, in breach of a rule stating the general must be present, and that Fares had initially told officers he had been in the car.

What was particularly alarming, wrote Aviad Hacohen in mass-circulation Israel Ha-Yom, was that this was not just a one-off but a "phenomenon that should raise a red flag for those who value the honor of the Israel Defense Forces."

Maariv commentator Ben Caspit lamented the fate of two of the army's brightest stars: "In both these cases, it is the army's loss, the country's loss, a loss to our security, to us."

(Reporting by Ori Lewis and Dan Williams; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)