Israeli general quits

An Israeli general who led troops along the Lebanese border resigned in a huff Sunday after an army inquiry faulted him for failing to prevent the capture of two soldiers that ignited 34 days of fighting with Hezbollah militias.

Brig. Gen. Gal Hirsch’s angry resignation letter, the latest in a series of recriminations over the inconclusive end of the war last summer, was expected to raise the pressure on Israel’s military chief of staff to step down.

Rather than accepting sole responsibility for the incident, Hirsch insisted that “senior echelons” should share blame for Israel’s failures.

“Placing field commanders at the focus of the inquiry is a grave error” that “causes me pain,” he wrote. “This is not the way to treat a commander.”

Israelis, who are used to clear-cut military victories, say that the campaign in Lebanon was poorly planned and executed and that leaders should be held accountable. Israel failed to halt Hezbollah rocket fire into its northern cities, and the soldiers who were captured in a July 12 cross-border raid are still missing.

Since the fighting ended Aug. 14, a group of disgruntled reserve soldiers has been demanding the resignations of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and senior military officers, including the chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz.

Until Sunday, just one general, Udi Adam, had resigned under criticism for his wartime role.

Calls for Halutz to quit have also come from members of Olmert’s government and from parliament. They have grown since Halutz’s decision last month, later put on hold, to promote or leave in place Hirsch and three other division commanders, even though their wartime actions were under army investigation.

Olmert, who meets in Washington today with President Bush, has been emphasizing Israel’s gains from the war. Visiting northern Israel last month, he noted that Hezbollah’s positions had been pushed back from the border and said that “Hezbollah does not threaten Israel and will not threaten it in the future.”

But some political analysts here believe that a high-level military shake-up is coming.

“I have a feeling that the government and Halutz know this and are waiting for a decent interval in order to deny Hezbollah another opportunity to declare a victory over Israel,” said Michael Oren, an army reserve major and senior fellow at the Shalem Center, an academic research institute in Jerusalem.

“For now, it is difficult for Olmert on the one hand to say we won the war and on the other hand to accept Dan Halutz’s resignation for having lost the war,” Oren said.

The army inquiry led by reservist Maj. Gen. Doron Almog said Hirsch’s Galilee division failed to prepare adequately for the scenario of a Hezbollah attack aimed at seizing soldiers. Hirsch resigned hours before Sunday’s release of Almog’s report, which recommends that he be fired.

Hirsch said he was quitting because the army had not defended him against severe public criticism that was causing “anguish” to his family.

The 42-year-old former paratrooper exemplifies Israelis’ conflicted feelings about the war.

He was considered a rising star in the military and a candidate to become the next chief of staff. Fellow officers describe him as brilliant, charismatic and arrogant. They credit him with predicting the war, if not the exact provocation that would start it, and performing well after it began. Several generals lobbied against his dismissal.

During Olmert’s recent visit to the north, Hirsch told him, “There’s a gap I have not managed to bridge between the feeling of combat unit commanders regarding what we accomplished and the public mood regarding the outcome of the war.”

Many Israelis applauded the resignation.

“War is not a university,” said David Einhorn, whose soldier son was killed in the conflict. “You don’t get two chances to pass a test.”

Aryeh Eldad, a member of parliament and a former commander of the army medical corps, said Hirsch should not be made a scapegoat.

“His departure should be a ‘follow me’ message to Halutz,” Eldad said. “If Halutz doesn’t get the hint that he failed in leading the war, then he too will find himself in a situation where he will have no choice.”

In Washington, Olmert and Bush are to discuss Israel’s other conflict, with the Palestinians. On the eve of those talks, Arab League officials meeting in Cairo called Sunday for a peace conference involving leaders of Israel, the Palestinian territories, Arab nations and the countries that are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

Hamas, the Islamist movement that governs the Palestinian Authority, endorsed the statement, saying for the first time that it was willing to hold peace talks with Israel.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said Hamas could not be involved in talks with Israel unless it met Western governments’ conditions that it recognize the Jewish state, renounce violence and abide by existing Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

The Arab League officials, representing 11 countries, also decided to stop complying with a Western-led financial blockade that has deprived the Palestinians of millions of dollars in international aid since Hamas came to power early this year. That decision was a response to the U.S. veto Saturday of a Security Council draft resolution condemning Israel’s deadly military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

boudreaux@latimes.com