UNITED NATIONS — Prime Minister Olmert is hanging on to his political career following a damning report on his government’s handling of the war in Lebanon. But he has refused to resign, and several political scenarios indicate that he could survive the expected wave of public protest.

In an interim report made public yesterday, a government-appointed panel accused Mr. Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz, and the army chief of staff during the war, Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, of “critical failures” and said they rushed into a war they were unprepared to wage.

Mr. Olmert went to war “despite the fact that no detailed military plan was submitted to him and without asking for one,” the panel said. Mr. Peretz “did not have knowledge or experience in military, political or governmental matters” — and made little effort to compensate for his lack of expertise, it said. Mr. Halutz failed to disclose to the government the scope of internal debate within the army, including whether a war could be won without a large-scale ground operation.

The panel, led by a former supreme court justice, Eliyahu Winograd, also criticized several other politicians — among them a former prime minister, Ehud Barak of Labor, and a former defense minister, Shaul Mofaz of Kadima — for failing to secure Israel’s northern border against a possible Hezbollah attack after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. According to the report, they enacted a policy of containment when they should have taken a more active approach.

Politicians from the left and the right yesterday immediately launched a campaign to unseat Mr. Olmert, reacting to popular sentiment in Israel, where recent polls have shown that support for the prime minister has plummeted to the single digits.

Amid the political turmoil in Israel, Hezbollah, which Israel fought in the war in Lebanon last summer, celebrated.

“The report proves our divine victory came true. The Israeli side was defeated,” the organization’s international relations chief, Nawaf al-Moussawi, told the Hezbollah satellite television station Al-Manar, according to a translation by the Israeli Web site Ynet. “What happened proves what we said all along — that this enemy can be defeated, and the path of resistance can bring victory.”

Political observers in Israel said yesterday that the future of the government could be determined when the Labor Party, currently led by Mr. Peretz, holds its leadership primary vote next month. The party is under as much pressure to change direction as Kadima, its larger partner in the coalition government.

A top contender for the Labor leadership, the centrist Mr. Barak, may now join an Olmert-led government as defense minister, shoring up his own popularity.

A more dovish former Navy commander, Ami Ayalon, is another contender to replace Mr. Peretz.

As the first details of the Winograd report began to leak out earlier this week, Mr. Ayalon said he would rather maintain his party’s support for the Kadima-led coalition than force a general election that, according to polls, may be won by a large margin by the right-leaning Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Members of Kadima, which was established last year by the then-prime minister, Ariel Sharon, are said to fear that their party will collapse if a general election take place. Several smaller parties are also expected to lose support. Mr. Netanyahu is seen as the only politician who may gain votes in a general election, but his Likud Party does not command enough seats in the Knesset to force such a vote.

Meanwhile, a large rally is scheduled for tomorrow in an attempt to revive a political protest movement dormant since the aftermath of the 1973 war, in which 2,656 Israeli troops were killed.

Mr. Olmert is even less popular than the government of that time, led by Golda Meir. But the street protests tomorrow may not be as intense, according to press reports, because of the much lower casualty count from the war in Lebanon and Israel’s current economic prosperity.

In a statement released yesterday, Mr. Olmert called the Winograd panel’s findings “grave and harsh,” citing “failures by the main decision-makers with myself at their head.”

He said he would “act in order to correct everything that needs correcting, thoroughly and quickly,” but he added, “it would be incorrect to resign, and I do not intend to do so.”