The release of the Winograd Commission’s final report could send Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his coalition government into the political wilderness.

The report, which acknowledged that the Zionist army suffered a serious defeat in its 33-day war against Lebanon’s Hezbollah, paves the way for the return of the Likud party, currently led by Benjamin Netanyahu.
The competition between the Labor party, led by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Likud intensified after the preliminary Winograd report was released.
The two reports acknowledge that Israel’s defeat was a result of the incompetence of army commanders and political leaders and the fact they devised no viable strategy for the 33-day war.
In the wake of these reports, which have weakened the current government, Netanyahu and Barak are each seeking to take advantage of the situation to oust Olmert’s coalition and make a political comeback.
From a regional perspective, the Winograd Commission’s final report underlines the power of guerilla warfare in the struggle against the Zionist army.
The report proved that Israel’s formidable war machine is extremely vulnerable to unconventional, guerilla, and protracted warfare, a fact which has been ignored by the region’s military analysts.
The Zionist army was established to confront Arab countries’ conventional armies, but the 33-day war proved that it is not up to par when confronted by the asymmetrical warfare tactics of guerillas, a fact that Hezbollah has long known.
Therefore, when confronting such an army, conventional warfare should be avoided and asymmetrical warfare strategies should be employed to exhaust it physically and psychologically.
Since Israel’s failure in the 33-day war, the Arab states have been putting the brakes on their rush to establish ties with the Zionist regime. For example, the Arab countries that attended the Annapolis Conference refused to sign a peace treaty with Israel despite the U.S. pressure.
Thus, it seems that the Zionist regime is heading for political isolation.
In such a situation, extremist groups like Netanyahu’s party will try to take the helm, claiming that only they can bring the Zionist regime out of the storm.
The hardliners may turn to adventurism to gain a few victories in order to restore the Israeli military’s damaged reputation.
If they take power, will the hardline Likud party launch an attack against Lebanon’s Islamic resistance forces to make amends for its past failures?
Of course, if that happens, the Lebanese Islamic resistance forces will analyze the Israeli army’s strong and weak points and utilize their experiences and their military capabilities to deal it another crushing blow, and then the countdown for the Zionist regime’s collapse will begin