Israel officially declared lastyear's conflict with Hezbollah "the Second Lebanon War".

A ministerial committee decided on the name after the Israeli governmentbowed to public pressure and formally termed the month-long conflict with theLebanese resistance movement a war.

The Israeli government opposed using the word "war" in naming the conflict,saying that the fighting wasn't between two sovereign states but rather betweena state and a resistance group.  

Instead, official Israeli documents used the words "campaign" or "fighting",even though the media and the public referred to the conflict as the SecondLebanon War.

Israeli government officials were initially hesitant to name the conflictthe Second Lebanon War because the 1982 Israel-Lebanon war is known in Israel as Operation Peace of the Galilee, not as the First Lebanon War.

The head of the Ministerial Committee on Symbols and Ceremonies, which wastasked with naming the conflict, confirmed that the Israeli public picked upthe Second Lebanon War to be the official name of the fighting.

"There's no discussion about it, and we decided on it unanimously," MinisterWithout Portfolio Yaakov Edri told Channel 10 television. 

By doing so, the ministerial committee also met a request by the families ofthe soldiers killed in the war, he added.

The official name is due to presented to Israeli Prime Minister EhudOlmert's cabinet for final approval next Sunday.

Israellaunched a deadly assault on Hezbollah after the resistance group captured twoIsraeli soldiers in a cross-border raid last July. A UN-brokered ceasefire endedthe fighting in August, with  Hezbollah leader Sheikh HassanNasrallah declaring a strategic victory over Israel.

More than 1,200 mostly Lebanese civilians were killed in Israel's vastbombardment of the country and land invasion in the south. Lebanon'sinfrastructure also suffered extensive damage.

The Israeli army lost 116 soldiers. Forty-three Israeli civilians were alsokilled by more than 4,000 Hezbollah rocket attacks.

Israel'sfailure to retrieve the two captured soldiers, crush Hezbollah and halt itsdaily cross-border rocket attacks led the Israelis to view the war as afailure.

Asked by Israel'spopular YNet news website to name the conflict, readers came up withsuggestions such as "Operation Failure", "The Idiotic War","The Big Shame" and "Amir Peretz's Final War".

The Lebanese generally refer to the conflict as the "July War",while  Hezbollah calls it "The DivineVictory".

An Israeli government-appointed panel probing the conflict is due to publishits preliminary findings next month about how the war was handled by Peretz,Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the chief of the armed forces at the time, DanHalutz, who resigned in January after a military investigation pointed to hisresponsibility for the defeat Israel suffered during the fighting. 

Several other top military commanders have already resigned over thehandling of the Lebanonwar, which shook public confidence in the Israeli leadership.

Source:Agencies