Dan Halutz, Who Is Responsible for This?

...last night, a long, long firefight erupted just yards inside Lebanon.

"It is impossible to know what happened: whether this was a targeted Israeli assault or a Hezbollah ambush, it was hard to know even which side was firing, but the battle seemed to follow the pattern of fighting that was established in the first real clashes of this conflict, around the Hezbollah base of Bint Jbeil.

"It has become clear that areas Israel claims to have cleared of militants remain dangerous and accessible to Hezbollah. The Israeli army is having to return again and again to villages which it says are their control. There never seems to be an end to it.

"Likewise, there was no obvious conclusion to the firefight last night: red tracer fire was streaking across the sky, in bursts here and there, for hours and hours, just 300 metres or so inside Lebanon.

"Israeli artillery was trying to clobber the Hezbollah position with shells, but the group responded with several rockets that they fired into Metulla. One landed yards from our hotel.

"Watching the battle it was just obvious that whatever Israel's plans for pushing towards the Litani River and sweeping Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, the army has absolutely not cleared out, at the very, very least, one Hezbollah position in an area in which they have committed thousands of soldiers and scores of armoured fighting vehicles, tanks, artillery bombardments and airstrikes for more than a fortnight.

Which officer(s), which Defense Minister, which Prime Minister, who?