Israel's assault on Hezbollah in August 2006, in which more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed in a massive aerial bombardment, was cast in a different light by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Rather than a one-off border incident, it was a key and carefully prepared strategy change.

Officially, the attack on Lebanon was sparked by the capture by Hezbollah of two Israeli soldiers from a border post on July 12, 2006. Lebanon's devastation was apparently designed to teach both Hezbollah and the country's wider public a lesson and it set back the country's rebuilding by twenty years. But Olmert's released testimony to the Winograd Committee, which is investigating the government's failures during the month-long attack, suggests that he had been preparing for such a war for at least four months.
Olmert testified before the Winograd Commission on February 1, and its questions focused on three basic issues: the circumstances surrounding Amir Peretz's appointment as defense minister; how and why the decision was made to go to war on July 12, several hours after reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were abducted by Hezbollah guerrillas on the northern border; and why Olmert decided to carry out a large-scale ground operation in Lebanon, 48 hours before the cease-fire, in which 33 soldiers were killed.
In his testimony, Olmert claimed that the first meeting on the situation with Lebanon was held on January 8, 2006, four days after Olmert was called to take the place of Ariel Sharon, who had fallen into a coma. Further meetings were held in March, April, May and July, after Corporal Gilad Shalit was abducted to the Gaza Strip.

As with the war in Iraq, the public has been given several reasons for why this attack was required. According to the army, it was trying to stop Hezbollah's rocket strikes. For several years the shelling of northern Israeli cities by Hezbollah has been going on, while the Hezbollah's cry for the destruction of Israel became ever louder. Since around 2000, the people of Kiryat Shmone and similar towns spend on the average a couple of days a month in bomb shelters. Israel felt that this situation became unsupportable.
Olmert defended the preparations to the Committee on the grounds that Israel expected Hezbollah to seize soldiers at some point and wanted to be ready with a harsh response. The destruction of Lebanon would deter Hezbollah from considering another such operation in the future.

A small corridor of land known as the Shebaa Farms is claimed by Lebanon but has remained occupied by Israel since 1967. As a result of the Farms area's occupation, Hezbollah has argued that Israel's withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 was incomplete and that the territory still needed liberating.
Israeli media revealed in January 2007 that for much of the past two years, Syria's leader, Bashir Assad, has been in back-channel negotiations over the return of Syrian territory, the Golan, currently occupied by Israel. Although those talks offered Israel the most favourable terms it could have hoped for (including declaring the Golan a peace park open to Israelis), Sharon and then Olmert refused to engage Damascus. A deal on the Golan with Syria would almost certainly have ensured that the Shebaa Farms were returned to Lebanon.
Israel, on their part, have repeatedly transgressed their northern border, complemented by Hezbollah's own violations. After the army's withdrawal in 2000, United Nations monitors recorded Israeli warplanes violating Lebanese airspace almost daily. Regular overflights were made to Beirut, where pilots used sonic booms to terrify the local population, and drones spied on much of the country.

When Hezbollah did capture the soldiers, there was a chance for Israel to negotiate over their return. Hezbollah made clear from the outset that it wanted to exchange the soldiers for Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.
Hezbollah has often come out well in such negotiations. In 1985, Israel freed 1,150 prisoners in exchange for three soldiers, many of whom were members of Hezbollah or Hamas. A similar exchange occurred in 2004. In exchange for the bodies of three Israeli soldiers, missing since October 2000, and one Israeli businessman, abducted in October 2000, Israel released more than 430 Arab prisoners on January 29, 2004. In addition, the bodies of approximately 60 Lebanese terrorists were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross at the Israel-Lebanon border near Rosh Hanikra.
The prisoner exchange scheme is a well-practiced initiative in which Israel tries to bring its soldiers home, dead or alive. As in July 2006, in 2000, the three soldiers, Benny Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Suwaeid, were abducted by Hezbollah while on patrol near the Lebanese border.
In 2004, in Israel the public was deeply divided over the wisdom of the deal. A Ma'ariv survey found 44 percent of Israeli respondents in favour of the exchange, while 43 percent opposed the deal. In October 2003, when initial word of an exchange with Hezbollah came out, critics argued that "exchanging hundreds or thousands of terrorists for one Israeli encourages kidnapping of Israelis, and frees hundreds or thousands of terrorists who will pick up their weapons and attack Israel. In other words, it endangers the public and should not be done." It seems that after the July 2006 kidnapping, Hezbollah was hoping to strike yet another such deal, but had not calculated on Israel's changed response.

The Winograd Commission asked Olmert what he thought his predecessor would have done. Olmert replied that following Hezbollah's failed November 2005 attempt to abduct Israel Defense Forces troops in the border village of Ghajar, Sharon ordered the army to prepare a "list of targets" for a military response in Lebanon. The list included an air attack on the long-range Fajr and Zilzal rockets, which were destroyed in an air raid the first night of the war. Sharon said at the time that the status quo, of ongoing Hezbollah raids, could not continue. Olmert told the commission that he behaved as Sharon would have.
Olmert stated that he had decided in earlier meetings that Israel's goal in an operation would be the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for the deployment of the Lebanese army along the Israeli border and the disarmament of Hezbollah. In May 2006, Olmert was informed by then-National Security Council head Giora Eiland and former prime minister Ehud Barak that the Lebanese government would agree to implement Resolution 1559 in return for an Israeli withdrawal from Shaba Farms. Olmert thought that it was best to implement the decision through diplomacy, and raised the issue with US President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac.

During deliberations in June 2006, following Shalit's abduction, Olmert told the committee he was certain there would be a similar attempt to kidnap soldiers on the Lebanese border. He ordered the IDF to prevent this.
Regarding the decision to broaden the ground operation toward the end of the war, Olmert said that he had wanted to influence UN Security Council deliberations so that draft resolution 1701, calling for a cease-fire, would be amended in Israel's favour. Olmert said that the morning he made the move, he had received a draft reflecting the French-Lebanese stance, which did not suit Israel. The expanded operation was aimed at pressuring the Security Council members, he said.