War Stirs Worry in Israel Over State of Military

Many Say Failure to Silence Hezbollah Sends Bad Signal

JERUSALEM, Aug. 18 -- Sgt. Lior Rahamin's Israeli reserve unit had not trained in two years. When its members were called up for the Lebanon war, they didn't have straps for their guns, spare ammunition, flak jackets or more than one good radio. There were other shortages: Twice their operations were canceled because they had no water to take; once they went two days without food.

"Hezbollah didn't surprise us. We were surprised by the Israel Defense Forces," said Rahamin, 30, a paratrooper who was wounded fighting in Lebanon in 1997 and who volunteered to go with his unit again. The next time they call, he said, "we will not show up."

From the failure to get food and water to the troops, to complaints of an uncertain war plan and overconfident generals, the Lebanon war is fast being viewed within Israel as a major stumble. Military and political leaders already are trading blame; some are expected to lose their posts. Officers say the mistakes show weakness in the military, the Israel Defense Forces, known as the IDF. Many Israelis worry that the failure of the military to squash the Hezbollah militia will make their country more vulnerable to other enemies.

"For four weeks we failed to defend ourselves against daily bombardments against our cities. This is a failure that never happened before," said Yuval Steinitz, a Likud Party member and former chairman of parliament's defense committee. "This is going to send a bad message."

Such fears were fueled by a strident speech by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the end of the war, promising to follow Hezbollah's model to retake the Golan Heights. Less than 24 hours after the cease-fire, he boasted that Hezbollah had "defeated the legend of the army that had never been defeated."

Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, a member of the Israeli army's general staff who is taking over as head of planning for the military, defended the outcome of the operation. "This was a unique war," he said in an interview Friday. "You can't judge it in a traditional way. Our war was much more like a war on terrorism than a war against an army. . . . It's not realistic to expect any white flag coming from the bunker."

Nehushtan insisted that the military did not expect to stop the Katyusha rocket attacks on Israel -- only to try to cripple Hezbollah.

"To stop the rain of Katyushas, you would have to take every inch of the land. The objective was to deal Hezbollah a significant blow," he said. "They have lost heavy numbers and a huge amount of infrastructure."

The complaints that have emerged as Israel's soldiers return from the field have heightened the country's concerns about the state of its army and the judgment of its leaders.

"If we would have gone in with more foot soldiers, we would have done more," said Avi Hubara, 40, a schoolteacher and reservist who volunteered to go to Lebanon to fight. "But the politicians were scared to make decisions. It was a failure. We got people killed. There was lots of friendly fire. We did not hurt the capability of the Hezbollah. We did not return the kidnapped soldiers. We did not win."

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his defense minister, Amir Peretz, have little military experience and are now the target of scathing criticism for faults in the operation. The Knesset, the Israeli parliament, is demanding a judicial investigation of the conduct of the war. Public opinion of the government and military leaders has plunged in the polls, and the returning soldiers are glum.

"Led Astray," said a headline in the Haaretz newspaper. "Why We Didn't Win," the largest-circulation daily, Yediot Aharonoth, pondered in bold type. There is much blame for the military, as well as for political leaders. The returning reserve soldiers tell of confusion, contradictory orders and missing supplies and equipment.