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Inside Israel

Olmert evading responsibility for war failures, say lawmakers


By Ryan Jones
March 04, 2007

Lawmakers from across the political spectrum on Sunday laid into Prime Minister Ehud Olmert over his failure to cooperate with an investigation into the government's handling of the home front during last summer's war with Hizb'allah.

Following the war, Olmert tasked State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss with probing the preparedness of the home front and its functioning during the conflict.

But when Lindenstrauss requested an interview with Olmert in December in order to advance his investigation, the prime minister refused, and instead insisted that Lindenstrauss submit his questions in writing.

Lindenstrauss acquiesced to the request, despite reportedly finding it inappropriate, and asked Olmert to return his answers by March 1.

Having never received Olmert's reply, Lindenstrauss and the Knesset State Control Committee are no longer willing to wait, and the latter has requested that Lindenstrauss present his interim findings this Tuesday, with or without the prime minister's testimony.

Olmert's office lashed out on Sunday, accusing Lindenstrauss of trying to tarnish the prime minister's image, but it was Olmert's open flaunting of the investigative process he himself commissioned that was further damaging his standing with the Israeli public.

Committee chairman Zevulun Orlev of the National Religious Party said it was clear Olmert was trying to evade responsibility for the numerous failures during and after the war, and in so doing was preventing Israel from properly preparing for the next war.

Olmert's conduct "conveys indifference and lack of concern to the State's citizens as to their fate in the home front, if and when the next war takes place," Orlev told Israel Radio.

Leftist members of the committee were equally critical:

"The Olmert government and the Kadima coalition have crossed a red line in the way they treat the control and legal systems in Israel," said radical left-wing lawmaker Yossi Beilin.

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