By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 2, 2007; A10
JERUSALEM, May 1 -- Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faced rising calls Tuesday for his resignation, a defection from his governing coalition and rumblings of insurrection within his own party a day after an official investigation found "serious failings" in his conduct of the war in Lebanon last summer.
Olmert's aides and political allies acknowledged that the Winograd Committee's interim report was unusually harsh and that the prime minister would require political resilience to survive.
"There is a group that is examining the possibility of his resignation and there is another group that does not think it is the right time," said Otniel Schneller, a lawmaker from Olmert's centrist Kadima party, describing the divide in the ranks as one member, Marina Solodkin, called publicly for him to resign.
"All in all, though, there is support for the prime minister," Schneller said.
But some Israeli analysts, citing the country's previous experience with postwar investigations, predicted that it is a matter of time before Olmert steps aside or is ousted from office, given the report's sharp indictment of the government's competence and the army's fitness.
The committee concluded that Olmert acted hastily last July in going to war against Hezbollah, an armed Lebanese Shiite Muslim movement, and never had a "detailed military plan" for securing the release of two captured Israeli soldiers or defending the country from a predictable rocket barrage during the fighting. The soldiers are still believed to be in Hezbollah's hands.
Olmert's departure would either hand the prime minister's post over to a Kadima lawmaker or trigger new elections. Either scenario would mean months of political paralysis, hampering any steps toward restarting a peace process with the Palestinians.
The Bush administration, largely alone in endorsing Olmert's decision to go to war last summer, has been promoting those talks with new energy in recent months.
"He does not think it would be best for the state of Israel right now to send it to new elections," said Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Olmert, who met Tuesday with the leaders of his coalition partners. "He doesn't think it's time to just start over."
But Israeli analysts say the depth of popular outrage, Olmert's ability to maintain the loyalty of his party, and the internal politics of his largest coalition partner, the center-left Labor Party, will determine how much longer he remains in office.
Yaron Ezrahi, a Hebrew University political science professor, said that "it took time for public anger to turn to protest" after state investigations into the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps following Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
Golda Meir and Menachem Begin resigned as prime minister following those inquiries, which Israeli analysts say were less harsh than the Winograd findings.
Protesters in several cities across Israel began marching toward Tel Aviv on Tuesday for a demonstration against Olmert's government planned there for Thursday. Kadima's parliamentary faction is scheduled to meet the same day to discuss Olmert's future, and a number of party lawmakers, perhaps a majority of the faction, are planning to call for his resignation.
"What will the climate of protest be like in the coming days? Ezrahi said. "If heated, his resignation could come very soon and, if not, in a few months. What is preventing an immediate collapse of the structure is the ambiguity of the alternatives."
Neither Kadima nor Labor wants new elections. Both have slipped sharply in opinion polls since finishing first and second, respectively, in March 2006 voting.
But Eitan Cabel, a Labor minister without portfolio, quit Olmert's cabinet Tuesday as a result of the report.
"The public has lost faith in the prime minister," Cabel said at a news conference in Tel Aviv, urging other coalition members to follow suit. "I cannot sit in a government with Olmert at its head."
Labor holds its party primary May 28, and opinion polls show its current leader, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, finishing a distant third. The Winograd findings accused Peretz, a former trade union leader, of failing to grasp the "basic principles of using military force to achieve political goals."
The top candidates are Ami Ayalon, an ex-navy admiral and head of the domestic security service, and Ehud Barak, a former prime minister and army chief of staff. Ayalon called Tuesday for Olmert to resign, signaling that he might pull Labor from the government if he wins.
But Barak has been reaching out to those Kadima officials who largely escaped criticism in the Winograd report, including Shimon Peres, a former Labor prime minister who is now a Kadima cabinet member and possible Olmert successor.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Olmert's chief deputy, is also a leading contender to replace him, even though both she and Peres supported the decision to go to war. The committee recommended a more active role for the Foreign Ministry in future conflicts.
"I don't want to go into names, but we will try to create a new Labor-Kadima government," said Ophir Pines-Paz, a Labor lawmaker who resigned from Olmert's cabinet last year. "We will decide in due course who the next prime minister will be."
The ousting of Olmert by members of his coalition would avoid new elections, which opinion polls show would likely be won by the Likud Party, headed by former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Israel Is Our Home, a party dominated by immigrants from the former Soviet Union headed by Avigdor Lieberman, would finish second according to opinion polls and could serve as a main partner in a hawkish coalition.
Special correspondent Samuel Sockol contributed to this report.
