Region | Palestinian Territories
Public support eroding for Olmert: poll
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faced a backlash on Friday over a UN proposal to end the war in Lebanon, with army officers saying they were held back and right-wing rivals calling for new elections.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:00 August 12, 2006
- Relatives of Israeli soldier Ben Sela mourn during his funeral in the city of Misgav, northern Israel. Ben Sela was killed during fighting with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon on Wednesday.
- Image Credit: AP
Occupied Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faced a backlash on Friday over a UN proposal to end the war in Lebanon, with army officers saying they were held back and right-wing rivals calling for new elections.
"Olmert must go," read a front page headline in Israel's left-leaning Haaretz newspaper.
Opinion polls, conducted before details of the proposed Security Council resolution emerged, showed public support eroding for Olmert, a career politician who lacks the combat credentials of many of his predecessors.
Twenty per cent of those surveyed by Haaretz believed Israel was winning the war.
Leading members of the right-wing opposition Likud party called the resolution a victory for Hezbollah.
"We will work to bring down the government," said Likud's Silvan Shalom. Yuval Steinitz, also of Likud, said the Israeli government should resign and call new elections.
Some Israeli military commanders said an expanded ground offensive, authorised by Olmert and his security cabinet on Wednesday, should not have been put on hold.
They accused Olmert of denying the army a chance to gain more ground militarily to secure a ceasefire that would be more favourable to Israel and less so to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Army officers said Israeli troops massed along the Lebanese border were now "sitting ducks" while Israeli political leaders awaited the outcome of the negotiations at the United Nations.
"We need to keep on going with the military operation," said one officer. He did not want to be identified.
Another officer told Haaretz: "Nasrallah will continue to mock us, and in the end there will be another war."
Justice Minister Haim Ramon defended the government, telling Israel Radio: "War in the name of the war is not an objective."
Tzachi Hanegbi, a senior member of Olmert's Kadima party, said if it was possible to remove Hezbollah from southern Lebanon through diplomacy, "obviously this is far preferable to a military clash with its heavy price in lives of fighters".
The latest proposal calls for the existing UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon to be reinforced by French and other troops, although Beirut has rejected a proposed mandate allowing the use of force for more than just self-defence.
Hezbollah would pull out from south of the Litani river, 20 km from the border as Israel wants. Israeli critics say the resolution would not secure the immediate release of two soldiers seized by Hezbollah, whose capture on July 12 sparked the war, and does not guarantee the group's disarmament.
Political sources said Israel was still pushing for changes to the resolution to make sure troops would withdraw only once the expanded peacekeeping force was on the ground.
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