Olmert undone by the militia

he said he could destroy

Looking back at this terrifying, futile war,

with its grotesque ambitions to "destroy"

the Iranian-supported Hizbollah militia,

it is incredible Olmert did not realise

within days that his grandiose

demands would founder

Day after day, for 34 days after 12 July,

the Israeli air force systematically destroyed

the major infrastructure of Lebanon,

repeatedly claiming it was trying

to avoid civilian casualties while the world's media

watched its aircraft blasting men,

women and children to pieces in Lebanon

The struggle for control of an Israeli government gripped by aftershocks from the failures of last year's bloody Lebanon war began in earnest last night after Tzipi Livni, the Foreign Minister, called on the Prime Minister to resign.

Ms Livni became the first senior figure in the cabinet - and in Ehud Olmert's own party, Kadima - to announce that she had told the Prime Minister face to face that he should quit in response to the official report highlighting the failures of the war.

Ms Livni, who made no secret of her desire to replace Mr Olmert, declared after a tense hour-long meeting with the Prime Minister:

"I told him that resignation would be the right thing for him to do. It's not a personal matter between me and the Prime Minister - this issue is more important than both of us."

So it has come to this. All those bodies, all those photographs of dead children - more than 1,400 cadavers (we are not including the 230 or so Hizbollah fighters and the Israeli soldiers who died) - are to be commemorated with the possible resignation of an Israeli prime minister who knew, and who cared, many Israelis suspect, little about war.

Yes, Hizbollah provoked last summer's folly by capturing two Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese-Israel border, but Israel's response - so totally out of proportion to the sin - produced another debacle for the Israeli army and, presumably now, for its Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert.

Looking back at this terrifying, futile war, with its grotesque ambitions to "destroy" the Iranian-supported Hizbollah militia, it is incredible Mr Olmert did not realise within days that his grandiose demands would founder.

Insisting the two captured Israeli soldiers should be released and the militarily powerless Lebanese government should be held responsible for their capture was never going to produce political or military results favourable to Israel.

One would have to add that Tzipi Livni's demand for the Prime Mnister's resignation sits oddly with her support for this preposterous war.

A close reading of the interim report of Judge Eliahou Winograd's report on the summer war - to which Mr Olmert himself only granted the title the "Second Lebanon War" a month after it had happened - shows clearly that it was the Israeli army which ran the military, strategic and political campaign.

Again and again in Winograd's report it is clear that Mr Olmert and his Defence Minister failed to challenge "in a competent way" (in the commission's devastating phrase) the plans of the Israeli army.

Day after day, for 34 days after 12 July, the Israeli air force systematically destroyed the major infrastructure of Lebanon, repeatedly claiming it was trying to avoid civilian casualties while the world's press watched its aircraft blasting men, women and children to pieces in Lebanon.

Israelis, too, were savagely killed in this war by Hizbollah's Iranian-provided missiles.

But it only proved the Israeli army, famous in legend and song but not in reality, could not protect their own people. Hizbollah fighters were told by their own leadership that if they would just withstand the air attacks, they could bite the Israeli land forces when they invaded.

And bite they did. In the final 24 hours of the war, 30 Israeli soldiers were killed by Hizbollah fighters and their land offensive, so loudly trumpeted by Mr Olmert, came to an end.

During the conflict, a Hizbollah missile almost sank an Israeli corvette - it burnt for 24 hours and was towed back to Haifa before it was able to sink - and struck Israel's top secret military air traffic control centre at Miron.

The soldiers captured on the border were never returned - pictures of them, still alive, are flaunted across the border at Israeli troops to this day - and Hizbollah, far from being destroyed, remain as powerful as ever;

And so one of Washington's last "pro-American" cabinets in the Middle East is now threatened by the very militia which Mr Olmert claimed he could destroy. Robert Fisk @ Indy