According to a Hizballah “officer” interviewed on Israeli television today, during the Lebanon War Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert snatched defeat from the jaws of victory: ’Our men would surrender if the war lasted 10 more days’.

“The cease-fire acted as a life jacket for the organization [at the end of the Second Lebanon War],” a Hizbullah officer said in an interview aired by Channel 10 on Tuesday.

In the interview, the unnamed officer said Hizbullah gunmen would have surrendered if the fighting last summer had continued for another 10 days.

His statement sharply contrasted with those made by Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah on several occasions since the monthlong war. At the end of the war, Nasrallah said his organization had gained a “divine victory.”

The officer shown on Channel 10 said the organization’s gunmen had been running low on food and water and facing rapidly diminishing arms supplies.

The officer also said that many Hizbullah commanders were ordered to hide before the war started, and that the gunmen who remained were forced to fire Katyusha rockets from inside urban populations because of the IDF’s efficiency in destroying launchers minutes after a launch had been detected. He said that when the gunmen relocated to cities and villages, they knew innocent civilians would be hurt as a consequence.

The quick arrival of IAF jets at rocket-launch sites, sometimes only four to five minutes after a Katyusha was fired, “surprised” Hizbullah, the officer said.