Pressure off Olmert after Lebanon war report

By Dan Williams and Ari Rabinovitch

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert looks certain to survive pressure to resign after a generally critical report on Wednesday endorsed key decisions he took during the 2006 war in Lebanon.

The government-appointed Winograd Commission was scathing on the general conduct of the conflict but largely spared Olmert, disappointing rivals who had been positioning themselves for a resignation that could have triggered a snap election.

Signaling that he planned to weather the storm over what the panel called "serious failings" by political and army leaders, Olmert's office said he would implement its recommendations, as he did after the five-member team made similarly damning judgments in an interim report last year.

He should also be free to pursue new, U.S.-sponsored peace negotiations with the Palestinians -- a relief for President George W. Bush for whom an Israeli election would all but wreck chances of a deal during his last year in the White House.

"The pressure is off," Olmert's recently retired national security adviser Ilan Mizrahi told Reuters.

"All in all, the findings let him off the hook," said Israeli analyst Mark Heller. "Most of the criticism that had been directed against him was not made on legitimate grounds."

Retired Supreme Court justice Eliahu Winograd told a news conference transmitted live by Israel's main broadcasters: "We found serious failings and shortcomings in the decision-making processes and staff work in political and military structures."

Most Israelis have already written off the war, launched after Hezbollah guerrillas seized two Israeli soldiers and killed eight, as an ill-thought-out debacle that dented the reputation of a military machine used to battlefield victory.

OLMERT "SINCERE"

There was little specific or new criticism of Olmert directly, while accusations were directed at the army, whose top general quit last year, as did the defense minister.

The 500-page report's conclusions on the last days of the month-long war, not covered in the interim document nine months ago, were that Olmert had had little option but to launch a final ground offensive that achieved little and cost more that 30 Israeli lives.

Even though U.N. mediators were trying to broker a ceasefire at the time, the assault was "almost inevitable", Winograd said, adding that Olmert "acted out of a strong and sincere perception of what (he) thought at the time was Israel's interest".

He called the conflict a "missed opportunity" that ended without clear victory over Hezbollah guerrillas, who pounded northern Israel with rockets and withstood Israel's onslaught.

"A few thousand men resisted, for a few weeks, the strongest army in the Middle East," he said of the Islamist fighters.

It was a conclusion echoed by Hezbollah MP Hussein Haj Hassan in Lebanon: "The report ... means this army, which has struck fear into the Arabs in the past, is today capable of being beaten."