Israel's Olmert faces backlash over Lebanon war

JERUSALEM, Aug 11 (Reuters) Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faced a backlash today over a U.N. proposal to end the war in Lebanon, with army officers charging that they were held back and right-wing rivals calling for new elections.

''Olmert must go,'' read one headline in Israel's left-leaning Haaretz newspaper.

Opinion polls, taken before details of the proposed Security Council resolution emerged, showed eroding public support in Israel for Olmert, a career politician who lacks the combat credentials of many of his predecessors.

Leading members of the right-wing opposition Likud Party called the resolution a victory for Hizbollah. ''We will work to bring down the government,'' said Likud's Silvan Shalom.

Yuval Steinitz, also of Likud, said: ''I call on the Israeli government to resign and call new elections.'' Some Israeli military commanders said an expanded ground offensive, authorised by Olmert and his security cabinet on Wednesday, should not have been put on hold.

They accused Olmert of denying the army a chance to gain more ground militarily to secure a ceasefire that would be more favourable to Israel and less so to Hizbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

Army officers said Israeli troops massed along the Lebanese border were now ''sitting ducks'' while Israeli political leaders awaited the outcome of the negotiations at the United Nations.

''We need to keep on going with the military operation,'' one officer said. He did not want to be named.

Another officer told the Haaretz newspaper: ''Nasrallah will continue to mock us, and in the end there will be another war.'' Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon countered on Israel Radio: ''War in the name of the war is not an objective. There are diplomatic objectives that cabinet and government has set.'' MORE REUTERS BDP PM1400