JERUSALEM: Lebanon has a habit of bringing down Israeli leaders.

If the war subsides between Israel and Hezbollah guerillas after a truce due this week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faces a battle for his political life to ensure he is not the next.

“Olmert began this war with almost wall to wall national support,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow of the Jerusalem-based Shalem Center thinktank who said he had been a passionate Olmert supporter.

“He’s ending this war with a frayed and wounded nation that feels itself to be leaderless.”

Despite positive noises from Olmert’s allies, Israelis are far from convinced the month-old war since Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12 counts as a victory.

Israel’s main achievement is the provision in a UN Security Council resolution for Hezbollah to be moved back from the border so a beefed-up peacekeeping force can deploy.

But the captured soldiers are still in the hands of Hizbollah which proved it could hold off the army and inflict heavy casualties while raining rockets on northern Israel. Meanwhile, there is no timetable for disarming the group.

The war killed more than 1,070 people in Lebanon and over 140 Israelis.

Except for Israel’s ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, Israel has suffered heavier civilian casualties than in any war since the one at independence in 1948.

“We did not win,” wrote Nahum Barnea in the best-selling Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. “The declaration of the ceasefire allows the war of the Jews to begin.” Lebanese entanglements have proved disastrous for Israeli leaders before.

Disillusionment with the 1982 invasion helped encourage Prime Minister Menachem Begin to step down in depression. His defence minister, Ariel Sharon, was also forced out.

An attempt to stop Hezbollah rockets with a big offensive was one factor that cost Shimon Peres the election in 1996.

Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s pullout in 2000 after a 22-year occupation was criticised for being too swift and possibly encouraging a Palestinian uprising. He was voted out in 2001.

Olmert has to answer questions such as:

Why could Israel not use the Middle East’s mightiest army to cripple Hizbollah despite its vow to?

Why was there a focus on air strikes, that were unable to stop Hezbollah rockets, rather than using ground forces to try to remove a threat to a million people in northern Israel?

Why was a major invasion put on hold to allow for diplomacy and then launched once a UN resolution was in the bag?

“Olmert knows this is the juncture in time at which an entirely different war is going to begin — the war over his political future,” said Ben Caspit of the Maariv daily.

One poll last week showed Olmert’s popularity had dropped below 50 per cent from over 75 per cent near the start of the war. That was even before the ceasefire.

Olmert’s lack of military know-how compared to predecessors has been a concern voiced since his election in March after Sharon’s collapse into a coma ended the former general’s premiership.

“There’s going to be a monumental eruption,” said one army officer, who could not be named. “It’s already started in the army with generals accusing each other and passing the blame.”

But there is no certainty that Olmert and his coalition will not be able to hang on at least for a while, even if some right-wing rivals are already calling for early elections.

“There will be a lot of searching questions and backbiting and so on, but I don’t think there is a near-term threat,” said Mark Heller of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. “It will take a long time before the picture of the fallout is clear.”

Critical battles will arise over the results of an expected commission of inquiry into the war and also when the financial cost starts to become plainer, requiring budget cuts to other areas of spending.

Doubt hangs over the very future of Olmert’s centrist Kadima party, founded by Sharon just before his collapse as a vehicle for a plan to reshape Israel’s settlements in the West Bank — a plan now shelved by the Lebanon war.

But Olmert’s main coalition partner, centre-left Labour, may not be in a hurry to leave. Party leader and Defence Minister Amir Peretz comes out of the war looking no better than Olmert and faces a brewing internal leadership challenge.

The main threat on the right wing is opposition leader and former premier Benjamin Netan-yahu. Although he stood beside the government during the war, he has made clear that he would have preferred a heavier military response from the start.

“If you don’t use the full force of the army to confront the worst attack on Israel since its founding, then you have failed as commander in chief,” said the Shalem Center’s Klein Halevi.

“Nothing short of a military victory over Hezbollah can redeem this government and even that might be too late to save Olmert.”—Reuters