An 81-year-old retired judge, Eliyahu Winograd, has just given a masterclass in how to conduct a genuine, fearless and plainspoken inquiry into a government failure. Asked by the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, to probe the country’s “second Lebanon war” last summer, he issued an interim verdict April 30 which required no translation from the mandarin code of euphemism. Olmert was, said the judge, guilty of “a severe failure” of judgment, rushing into a “hasty” war with no clear plan, setting “overambitious and unobtainable goals”. Others were at fault but, as prime minister, Olmert bore “supreme responsibility”.

Israel is shaking from the shock of it, but it should also allow itself a pang of pride in the Winograd process. Handpicked by Olmert himself, this government inquiry was assumed to lack the independence of a state probe staffed by supreme court judges.

But Winograd and his team were nobody’s patsies: instead they dared to speak uncomfortable truth to arrogant power. Israel’s boast that it is the only democracy in the Middle East is often met with a snort. But this exercise has shown that Israel is capable of a democratic accountability entirely absent in its region.

The report lays into the incompetence and hubris of the men at the top, the decay that has been allowed to eat away at the Israel Defence Forces, even the individualistic hedonism of a nation that once placed a great premium on collective solidarity. Not since the Agranat report into the 1973 war has there been such a comprehensive indictment.

This round of self-flagellation was not prompted by concern that the 2006 pounding of Lebanon was “disproportionate”, to recall the word of that hour.

Israelis still believe they had every right to take on Hizbullah, who had abducted two Israeli soldiers from Israeli soil and had thousands of rockets aimed at Israeli civilian towns. The criticism is not that Olmert fought the war but that he fought it badly. That he sent troops in harm’s way with no coherent plan and insufficient protection; and that a non-victory against a mere guerrilla movement has shattered the IDF aura of invincibility essential to deter Israel’s enemies.

An instant poll for Israel’s Channel 10 sought to discover how many people would vote for Olmert now if elections were held today. The answer was 0%. Thirty three years ago, the Agranat commission drove Golda Meir from office and Winograd seems set to do the same to Olmert - if not now, then with his final report this summer.

What could save him? The answer might just be his old rival, Bibi Netanyahu. Antipathy to Bibi is the glue which currently binds Olmert’s coalition together: the different parties fear that if they bring down the government and trigger elections, they will only lose seats - and let Netanyahu win. That fear could allow Olmert to cling on.

But not for long. At the end of this month, Labour, the main partner of Olmert’s Kadima party, will choose a new leader. Already the frontrunner, former intelligence chief Ami Ayalon, has called for Olmert to quit and promised to withdraw Labour from the coalition if he does not. His rival for the leadership, former PM Ehud Barak, may feel obliged to follow suit.

The sunniest view would have Olmert making a diplomatic move. In recent weeks he has had long, one-on-one talks with leading peaceniks, including the acclaimed writer Amos Oz. And he has spoken positively of the Arab League initiative, which offers Israel full normalisation with the Arab world in return for a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders.

The more pessimistic outlook sees the Israeli authorities mirroring the Palestinians, who have themselves cobbled together a coalition unable to conceal their deep, underlying disagreement over the way ahead. On one side stands an Israel which, as Hussein Agha and Robert Malley write in the current edition of the New York Review of Books, cannot decide “whether to respond to Syria’s peace overtures or to spurn them, whether to deal with (Palestinian president) Abbas or to forget him”. On the other stands a Palestinian unity government repressing a civil war between Fatah and Hamas. This is the current tragedy of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, to be led by those too paralysed to lead.

And yet, a middle, hopeful thought is possible. Perhaps the current Israeli

upheaval will force a realignment, not immediately, but in an election 12 or 18 months from now.

The central question of that contest could be: how should Israel respond to the Arab initiative? After all, as Olmert himself once said, Israelis are tired of fighting.

And because all the other methods, including both bilateral talks with the Palestinians and the policy of unilateral territorial withdrawals on which he was elected, have failed. That, then, may be Olmert’s legacy, to bequeath the failure that forces something better. — The Guardian