Lieutenant General Dan Halutz was reacting to an assessment presented by military intelligence chiefs to parliament's foreign affairs and defence committee.
JERUSALEM: Israel's embattled army chief said on Wednesday his troops could remain deployed on the Lebanese side of the border for months, fuelling opposition claims the war is being mismanaged.
Lieutenant General Dan Halutz was reacting to an assessment presented by military intelligence chiefs to parliament's foreign affairs and defence committee.
"The full deployment of the strengthened UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) will take months," an intelligence chief said.
Halutz reacted by saying that "Tsahal (the Israeli army) will have to remain on the ground until then," the source said on condition of anonymity.
During the same briefing, another senior military official said the thousands of Israeli troops still in Lebanon were gradually pulling back to the positions they held before the expanded ground offensive launched last weekend.
As part of a UN-brokered agreement for a cessation of hostilities, which took effect on Monday, Israeli troops are due to hand over the areas they control in south Lebanon to a UN peacekeeping force and the Lebanese army.
Halutz had said on Tuesday that the process could last between a week and 10 days.
A senior foreign ministry official said that "if the international community is hesitant and slow in deploying the multi-national force, this would cause friction on the ground and contribute to the weakening of the fragile stability."
Halutz has faced intense criticism from both ends of the political spectrum over his handling of military operations in Lebanon.
"The army is trapped until UNIFIL deploys its force. It's unacceptable to me that the army has become a hostage and its troops sitting ducks until this UNIFIL force is deployed. We have to exit Lebanon now," said Ran Cohen, an MP from the Meretz party.
During the same committee briefing, a senior army officer was quoted as saying Israel had "achieved a significant victory which was, however, not resounding" in its war against Hezbollah.
After initially arguing that Israel's offensive against Hezbollah was justified, the country's peace camp argued that troops should not have been sent in after the government's endorsement of the UN resolution on a cessation of hostilities. Israel's opposition right-wing politicians are equally unhappy with the army and the government's handling of the war.
"There's no doubt that there have been problems with the army and the government's conduct during the war and several questions have surfaced over the bad agreement reached at the UN Security Council," said Silvan Shalom, a former foreign minister and member of the right-wing Likud party.
Israel's hawks argue that UN Security Council Resolution 1701 has cracks that will allow Hezbollah to keep its weapons and pose a continued threat to the Jewish state.
"For four weeks, the Israeli rear was under fire. The government hesitated to order the army to seize south Lebanon ... The army failed in its mission to protect the home front," another senior Likud MP, Yuval Steinitz, said.
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