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JERUSALEM — In a widely anticipated judgment, a formal inquiry released on Wednesday found “grave failings” among political and military leaders during the 2006 Lebanon War, especially in their failure to decide what kind of war to fight.

But the inquiry was less scathing about the performance and motivations of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert than many expected, and he is likely to keep his post.

The war against Hezbollah was “a serious missed opportunity,” the inquiry concluded, in which “a semi-military organization of a few thousand men resisted, for a few weeks, the strongest army in the Middle East, which enjoyed full air superiority and size and technological advantages.”

But the inquiry decided that the government’s decision to launch a major ground invasion at the end of the war was “almost inevitable,” despite the deaths it caused, and that Mr. Olmert acted in the interests of the state, not out of partisan considerations.

This final report of the Winograd Commission, coming nine months after its harsh preliminary report and 17 months after the end of the war, contained few surprises or revelations.

Mr. Olmert, who faced down demands that he resign last May, including from within his own Kadima Party, has said that he will not resign now. This final report, while castigating official decision-making and the command of the Israeli ground forces, is unlikely to spark the popular pressure that would be required to force Mr. Olmert to go.

The decision to stage a large ground operation as the United Nations Security Council was negotiating a cease-fire resolution has been the most controversial aspect of the war for Israelis. In the last days of the war, 33 Israeli soldiers died, a large number for this small country. Many have asked if they died in vain, sacrificed for a prime minister trying to salvage his reputation.

But the commission’s judgments do not support that harsh view of Mr. Olmert’s motivations, and that may be enough to keep him in office at least through the end of the year, when he and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas have promised to try to complete a peace treaty.

Judgments “should not be made with hindsight,” said the commission, named after its chairman, Eliyahu Winograd, a retired judge. The decision for the ground operation gave the government “necessary military and political flexibility,” while the operation’s goals “were legitimate, and not exhausted by the wish to hasten or improve the diplomatic achievement.” Mr. Olmert has argued that the final push, though aborted by the cease-fire, was required because the negotiations over the cease-fire resolution were moving in favor of Hezbollah, not Israel.

Nahum Barnea of Yediot Aharonot, one of Israel’s most influential columnists, said that the final report had a more gentle tone, which will affect the public response. “The first report was all about personal responsibility, and here they ran away from it,” he said. “Olmert is starting the struggle over his job from a better position than people expected.”

But Mr. Barnea noted that the Agranat Commission into the 1973 war created such a public furor that Prime Minister Golda Meir had to resign.

But it is likely that the high-water mark of public indignation with Mr. Olmert came with the first Winograd report, nine months ago.

The key to Mr. Olmert’s survival now is the defense minister and former prime minister, Ehud Barak, who heads the Labor Party. Not in office during the war, Mr. Barak said months ago that he would pull Labor out of the government after this final report, but now says that he will do what is best for the country. Labor does not want new elections, which the Likud Party of Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to win, and Labor also wants to support the peace talks between Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas.

Mr. Barak says he will study the report and the reaction to it before responding, but he is not expected to pull down the government. Nor is the Kadima Party now likely to try to replace Mr. Olmert with a new prime minister without having new elections.

In a statement, Likud said the Winograd judgments were “extremely harsh” and called on Mr. Olmert to take responsibility and resign, and for Mr. Barak to keep his promise and pull out of the government.

Nine months ago, when the first report was published, Mr. Olmert survived a large demonstration in Tel Aviv, angry editorials and even a public demand from his deputy, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, that he resign. He refused to do so, and she did not resign, either, arguing that she was not at fault.

Had Ms. Livni quit at the time, the Kadima party might have pushed Mr. Olmert to go. Ms. Livni makes no secret of wanting to be prime minister. But her perceived lack of decisiveness — or opportunism, some said — damaged her reputation, although she remains personally popular.

Mr. Olmert has been weakened, without question, making it likely that elections will be called early next year. Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist at Hebrew University, also believes Mr. Olmert’s days are numbered, since Israeli leaders “rise and fall” on their war leadership. “There has never been a case in Israeli history that an authoritative commission said something so blunt about a war that took the lives of soldiers and the lives of civilians, that blamed so bluntly the political decision makers for the failure of the war,” he said.

“The process of erosion of Olmert’s leadership is unstoppable,” Mr. Ezrahi said. “But the Israeli public is not ready to execute him immediately.”

The report, which is some 500 pages in Hebrew in its classified version, harshly criticizes the practices of government and the performance of the military. It is particularly critical of the ground forces and their commanders, and the military’s failure to both stop Katyusha rocket fire from southern Lebanon and to adequately protect Israeli citizens within the rockets’ range.

The government, having decided to initiate a major war after the capture of two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid by Hezbollah, could never decide among two main options, the commission said — either “a short, painful, strong and unexpected blow to Hezbollah,” largely from the air, or an effort “to bring about a significant change in the reality in southern Lebanon with a large ground operation,” including a temporary occupation of the area to “clean it” of Hezbollah military infrastructure.

The government equivocated, the inquiry said, and had no exit strategy, prolonging the war but refusing to have a major ground operation, and in fact was unprepared to launch one until the first week of August. In the end, the ground operation was undertaken “only after the political and diplomatic timetable prevented its effective completion.”

But responsibility for failing to provide the government “with a military achievement that could have served as the basis” for more serious diplomacy “lies mainly” with the military, the report said.

In a statement, the army, under a new chief of staff, accepted the report and detailed its extensive efforts to apply the lessons of the war.

Mr. Olmert’s office issued a statement saying that he would read the report carefully and implement its recommendations, and that “he has full faith” in the Israeli military. “Taking responsibility means staying on, fixing, improving and continuing to lead the way forward,” Mr. Olmert’s cabinet secretary, Oved Yehezkel, told Army Radio.

In the fighting, more than 1,000 Lebanese died, and more than 160 Israelis.

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