Oct. 1, 2006 10:50 | Updated Oct. 1, 2006 13:34

By JPOST.COM STAFF

The Lebanon war's failure to meet the public's expectations explains the sense of disappointment among Israelis, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz told Yediot Aharonot in an interview published on the eve of Yom Kippur.

"I ask myself whether things could have been done differently, and if so- how?" Halutz asked. "I'm trying to ask myself if I'm convinced that our direction was the right one from an operational perspective."

"Did I make the right decisions?" he continued.

"If there was one thing I worried about throughout the war with Hizbullah, it was people's lives," Halutz confessed. "When I hear that a soldier dies it affects me deeply. This is the hardest time in my life."

"It's not how it looks," he explained, "but that's how I feel inside. Everything is hard for me - the price of the war, it's personally hard for me. I can't compare it to anything I've ever experienced."

To most people the depth of their errors would be self evident if they had been the Chief of Staff during the war in Lebanon this last summer.

How can it be so hard for this man to see the errors that he made and do the right thing and resign?