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Not seeing eye to eye: Peretz, Olmert, and Livni in the Knesset (AP file)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners September 1, 2006 |
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Defense Minister Amir Peretz is demanding a sweeping, independent inquiry into Israel's recent war in Lebanon, associates said Friday, creating even greater ferment in a governing coalition destabilized by the conflict.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rebuffed demands for such a probe, which would have the authority to dismiss top officials, and appointed an investigation of his own.
Olmert plans to seek Cabinet approval on Wednesday for the panel he has appointed. Majority support is expected.
Peretz issued no public statement on his stand, and his spokesman wasn't immediately available for comment. But participants at a Labor Party meeting on Friday, including lawmakers Avishai Braverman and Ofir Pines-Paz, confirmed the defense minister had broken with Olmert. And Army Radio cited the defense minister as saying he supported a so-called judicial inquiry because he wanted a transparent investigation that the public would trust.
Peretz had been criticized widely shortly after the war for appointing a panel to investigate the military's performance, but not his own.
Political analyst Hanan Crystal said the defense minister's aboutface was a bid to stake out a "moral" position to shore up his crumbling leadership of the Labor Party. But he doubted Peretz would quit the coalition if Olmert didn't authorize an independent probe.
"As far as we understand, this won't lead to a divorce," he said. But it "will create more bad blood between him and Olmert."
Peretz's dovish Labor Party controls 19 seats in the 120-member parliament, and Olmert's centrist Kadima has 29. But those numbers are way down in recent polls. If elections were held today, surveys say both parties would lose at least a third of their parliamentary strength.
The two parties allied just four months ago around a plan to draw Israel's final borders with the Palestinians. But the war against Hezbollah guerrillas has led Olmert to shelve that plan while he beats back criticism that the government and military bungled the five-week campaign.
The Israeli public has been clamoring for a serious inquiry into the war, which was triggered by a July 12 cross-border raid by Hezbollah gunmen who captured two Israeli soldiers.
Critics have faulted the government for accepting a U.N.-brokered cease-fire without crushing Hezbollah or winning the release of the captured servicemen. Reports from the field of military unpreparedness, and the deaths of 33 soldiers in a last-minute ground offensive have only fueled the public outrage.
Peretz, a former union boss with scant military experience, has come under particularly heavy fire. On top of having his defense credentials questioned, he faces a rebellion from Labor colleagues who say he has betrayed the party's social agenda by supporting welfare spending cuts to help finance the war.
A total of 120 Israeli soldiers and 39 civilians were killed in the fighting, as were at least 854 Lebanese.
AP contributed to this report.
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