UN says 'peace tomorrow' despite Israeli attack

19 Israeli soldiers died yesterday. In a conflict that both Israel and Hizbullah have now agreed will end at 0500 GMT on Monday.

This is why I think Olmert must go.

How does he justify the deaths of those young men to their parents when the UN resolution was passed on Friday to end the conflict, and yet he decided to pointlessly fight on until the Israeli cabinet votes today? A vote in which he is going to ask that they accept the ceasefire?

By yesterday afternoon 30,000 additional Israeli troops had crossed into Lebanon. What the Hell is Olmert playing at?

Hizbullah have said that they will observe the ceasefire, but only if Israeli troops leave Lebanese soil. And Olmert is ploughing more troops in there than ever before. Is this all a last gasp effort to show the Israeli public some sign of Israeli military superiority? Does he intend to ignore the ceasefire? I really have no idea at this point. And the messages coming from the Israeli military are decidedly mixed.

The foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, said she expected it to end on Monday, but the officer commanding the campaign, Major General Dan Halutz, said that he expected it to go on for another week.

On Israeli television yesterday, the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, appeared to condone the continued Israeli action, saying she hoped the shooting in the Israel-Lebanon war would end within 'a day or so'.

This is the same Condoleezza Rice who said, in an attempt to make Hizbullah accept a very one sided UN resolution: "We'll see who's for peace and who isn't."

Now she's cheerleading the Israelis as they fight on despite that resolution.

Rice said the broadened Israeli offensive in Lebanon, which began on Friday a few hours before the UN ceasefire resolution, had been anticipated and was normal.

'I understand that this is going on,' she said of the Israeli push deep into Lebanon where an international force will move in alongside the Lebanese army. 'My understanding is that this is part of the normal operations that were contemplated. When the ceasefire - the cessation of hostilities - comes into being, Israel will stop.'

Will they? That's still, at this stage, a rather large presumption. They certainly aren't acting like an army that's about to stop it's onslaught.

My worry is that Olmert knows fine well that the end of this ill thought out conflict may very well be the end of his Premiership and that he'll do anything to achieve some kind of success on the ground that he can put before the Israeli public as justification for the last month they have spent in bomb shelters.

He'll certainly know the feelings of some Israelis if he ever bothers to pick up an Israeli newspaper. Yesterday in Ha'aretz:

In a front-page story headlined 'Olmert must go', Ari Shavit, a respected commentator in the Israeli daily Haaretz, tore into the Prime Minister, saying he had left Israeli appearing weak and vulnerable in the face of an increasingly confident Hizbollah. In more than 300 responses on the newspaper's website, the comments, many from Israeli Jews, were mostly supportive of his critique.

Shavit scoffed at a new ground offensive - launched even as the UN ceasefire resolution was signed - as a publicity gimmick and raised the question of whether the government has a future.

'I think once a truce is installed you will have political turmoil in Israel and you will have a very serious process of soul searching which will also have political expression,' he said.

'If Prime Minister Olmert is to survive, he will have to make a major reshuffle. Things will not go back to where they were before.

'This has been a terrible shock. This has been a very dramatic event in Israel's history and it is still too early to tell what the full political implications will be. I find it improbable to believe that the government as it is will remain in power for many years. If there is no significant achievement for Israel at the very last moment, Olmert will find it very difficult to tell people we went to war for certain aims and failed to achieve them. He desperately needs some last-minute achievement and that's why we see the Israeli troops moving north.'

According to a poll in Haaretz on Friday, only about 20 per cent of Israelis thought they were winning the war, while 43 per cent believed the conflict would end in stalemate. Only 48 per cent of those polled supported Olmert's handling of the conflict with Hizbollah - down from 75 per cent at the beginning of hostilities only four weeks ago.

The end is nigh for Olmert, and I always worry about what actions people trapped in corners might take. He should accept that he has been beaten and accept whatever the consequences of that defeat might be.

His actions have been disastrous. He chose to go to war with Hizbullah when he could have chosen the same prisoner swap that he will now be forced to do. He has gained nothing for his actions and the Lebanese people have paid an horrific price.

It is only fitting that he should now fall on his sword. Though with both Bush and Blair still in their respective positions after the discovery that the US and UK invaded Iraq looking for WMD that didn't exist, I feel I am expressing the views of another political time, where politicians had some sense of honour.

I am thinking specifically of Lord Carrington, who resigned after the Argentineans invaded the Falklands through no fault of his own, who nevertheless felt that someone had to pay the price and designated himself for the task.

Sadly, we are no longer governed by men of such principle.

What lengths will Olmert go to in order to hold on to office? We are about to find out.

But before we do, let's remind ourselves of why this all started. Do you remember Gilad Shalit?

Tags: Olmert, Israel, Hizbullah, George Bush, UN, resolutions, Lebanon, Blair, US, UK, Beirut, destruction, defeat, neo-con, neo-cons,