Barak: Inexperienced government waged war

By · August 7, 2008

Israel’s leadership was too inexperienced to wage the Second Lebanon War, Ehud Barak said.

Barak, who re-entered Israeli politics and took over the Defense Ministry largely as a result of public dismay at the costly 2006 war against Hezbollah, said in a newspaper interview published Thursday that the Israeli government at the time should be held accountable.

“We paid a high price two years ago for the inexperience of the leadership, which we can prevent in the future,” Barak told Italy’s Corriere della Serra.

He appeared to be alluding both to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and to Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who is preparing her bid to lead the ruling Kadima Party and eventually to assume the premiership.

Barak, a former prime minister who has made no secret of his own plan to retake top office, has recently been frequently discussing his own rich political record. Earlier this week he said Israeli politics must not be run “like a television reality show” – a derisive reference to the upcoming Kadima leadership election.