ABSTRACT
The 14th of August marked the end of the military confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel in the summer of 2006. It lasted more than 33 days and over time became lodged in the Israeli collective memory as the ‘Second Lebanon War’. 1 The conclusion of the military campaign was also the sign for the beginning of numerous acts of demonstration to be held in protest against this war. These were led by various groups in the Israeli public who claimed that the war had been incompetently managed, consequently leading to an unclear and inconclusive ending, a weakening of Israel’s deterrence force in face of its enemies and an unwarranted loss of civilian and military life. Families who had lost their sons in the war assembled a protest movement which called for the resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Minister of Defence Amir Peretz and Chief of Staff Dan Halutz. Israel Defence Force (IDF) reserve soldiers who came back from Lebanon did not return to their jobs and homes but instead set up tents in front of the ministries of the Israeli government in protest. They threatened that they would not vacate the premises until resignations were tendered by these three central figures. In a short while, the reservists were joined by a long list of civil society groups. The high point of the protest movement was the demonstration of more than 100,000 people at the Rabin Square in Tel Aviv on 9 September 2006. As a result of the swelling protest Chief of Staff Dan Halutz eventually resigned from his post and the Israeli government decided to establish a governmental commission of inquiry headed by Justice Eliyahu Winograd, whose role was to examine the way in which the war had been managed and the country’s pre-war preparedness.
