headlined his campaign and accepting the Defense portfolio because of its prestige, rather than the Finance portfolio that better corresponded with the Labor Party social agenda. His performance as a Minister of Defense during the Second Lebanon War was deemed disappointing, which led to early elections for the Labor Party leadership. He was defeated by former Labor Party chairman and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and resigned from his post. During his term as Defense Minister, the Second Lebanon war erupted following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by the Hezbollah from Israel's northern border. Peretz and Olmert launched a campaign against the Lebanese militia of Hezbollah. For 33 days the attacks were carried out via air and land on military and civilian targets. In the last 48 hours of the war, Peretz pushed for a massive ground operation. Land troops were flown by helicopters to seize the ground between the Israeli-Lebanese border and the river Litani. In this operation, over 33 Israeli soldiers were killed, and much anger was created amongst the Israeli public. The committee that was established by the government to investigate the war, the Winograd Committee, found that the decision to launch this operation was rational and justifiable under the current circumstances. After losing the internal elections in the Labor party to Ehud Barak, Peretz quit the defence ministry in June 2007. Hatnuah Peretz remained in the Knesset after losing his leadership role in the Labor Party and was re-elected in 2009. He opposed Ehud Barak's decision to enter a coalition government headed by Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu. In December 2012, he left the Labor Party to join Tzipi Livni's new Hatnuah party. As a result, he resigned from the Knesset, and was replaced by Yoram Marciano. He was re-elected to the Knesset on the Hatnuah list in the 2013 elections, and was appointed Minister of Environmental Protection. However, he resigned from the post on 9 November 2014 due to his opposition to the government's budget plans. After being re-elected again in 2015 on the Zionist Union list (an alliance of Hatnuah and the Labor Party), Peretz defected from Hatnuah back to the Labor Party in September 2015, Minister of the Economy Peretz was re-elected as Labor party leader in the 2019 Israeli Labor Party leadership election. In the lead up to the September general elections, Peretz promised to not join a Netanyahu-led government, and in