Amnesty
International Details
Israeli War Crimes In Lebanon
By Peter Symonds
25 August 2006
World
Socialist Web
An
Amnesty International (AI) report published on Tuesday provides a chilling
account of the death and destruction inflicted on the civilian population
of Lebanon by the Israeli military during its month-long, US-backed
offensive. Entitled “Deliberate destruction or ‘collateral
damage’? Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure”, the
document demonstrates that the Israeli government is directly responsible
for numerous war crimes against the Lebanese people.
AI executive deputy secretary
general Kate Gilmore dismissed as “manifestly wrong” Israel’s
claims that its attacks were legitimate and legal. “Many of the
violations identified in our report are war crimes, including indiscriminate
and disproportionate attacks. The evidence strongly suggests that the
extensive destruction of power and water plants, as well as the transport
infrastructure vital for food and other humanitarian relief, was deliberate
and an integral part of a military strategy,” she told the press.
Gilmore also took issue with
Israeli assertions that it had simply targetted Hezbollah positions
and support facilities, blaming civilian deaths on Hezbollah’s
use of civilians as a “human shield”. “The pattern,
scope and scale of the attacks makes Israel’s claim that this
was ‘collateral damage’, simply not credible,” she
said.
The report was based on first-hand
information gathered by a field mission to Lebanon, interviews with
dozens of victims and discussions with UN, Lebanese and Israeli officials
and non-government organisations, as well as official statements and
media accounts.
Between July 12 and August
14, the Israeli air force conducted more than 7,000 air attacks in Lebanon,
supplemented by 2,500 naval bombardments and an unknown number of artillery
barrages. An estimated 1,183 people were killed, about one third of
whom were children, 4,054 were injured and 970,000 people, or 25 percent
of the total population, were displaced. Half a million people sought
shelter in Beirut, many in parks and public spaces without basic facilities.
“The Lebanese government
estimates that 31 ‘vital points’ (such as airports, ports,
water and sewage treatment plants, electrical facilities) have been
completely or partially destroyed, as have around 80 bridges and 94
roads. More than 25 fuel stations and around 900 commercial enterprises
were hit. The number of residential properties, offices and shops completely
destroyed exceeds 30,000. Two government hospitals—in Bint Jbeil
and in Meis al-Jebel—were completely destroyed in Israeli attacks
and three others were seriously damaged,” the report stated.
The head of Lebanon’s
Council for Development and Reconstruction, Fadl Shalak, estimated on
August 16 that the damage amounted to at least $US3.5 billion—$US2
billion for buildings and $US1.5 billion for infrastructure such as
bridges, roads and power plants. Other government surveys indicate that
the extent and cost of the destruction could be higher.
The AI cited the comments
of senior Israeli military officers, demonstrating that civilians and
civilian infrastructure were deliberately targetted as collective punishment
for the entire Lebanese people. Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) Chief of
Staff Lieutenant General Dan Halutz told the New York Times that the
Lebanese government was responsible for Hezbollah’s actions. He
branded Hezbollah as “a cancer” that Lebanon must get rid
of, “because if they don’t their country will pay a very
heavy price.”
The report pointed out that
international law governing the conduct of war prohibits any direct
attack on civilian objects, as well as indiscriminate attacks that fail
to distinguish between military and civilian targets. It also disputed
Israeli claims that civilian facilities were legitimate military targets,
because of their potential use by Hezbollah. AI pointed out that international
law also bans disproportionate attacks—that is, those in which
the “collateral damage” is excessive compared to direct
military advantage to be gained.
The destruction of infrastructure
was a deliberate policy designed to drive hundreds of thousands of civilians
out of the south of the country and terrorise the Lebanese population
as a whole. The aim was to make the entire southern region uninhabitable.
The AI report explained: “With the electricity cut off and food
and other supplies not coming into the villages, the destruction of
supermarkets and petrol stations played a crucial role in forcing local
residents to leave. The lack of fuel also stopped residents from getting
water, as water pumps require electricity or fuel-fed generators,”
the report stated.
The Israeli sea and air blockade,
along with the extensive destruction of roads and bridges, compounded
the humanitarian disaster by obstructing relief efforts. Ships carrying
vital emergency supplies were held up for days, seeking guarantees of
safe passage from the Israeli navy. On August 4, the Israeli air force
severed the last significant road link to Syria, blocking an aid convoy
bringing in 150 tonnes of relief supplies. The Lebanese health ministry
estimated that 60 percent of the country’s hospitals had ceased
to function by August 12 due to fuel shortages.
Israeli Justice Minister
Haim Raimon notoriously declared: “All those now in south Lebanon
are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah.” On August
7, Israeli warplanes dropped a leaflet banning the movement of any vehicle
south of the Litani River, turning the entire region into a free-fire
zone. Yet, as the AI report explained: “[A]round 100,000 civilians
were trapped in southern Lebanon, afraid to flee... Some were unable
to move because of their age or disability, or simply because they had
no access to transport. Residents were rapidly running out of food,
water and medicines, and the ICRC [International Committee of the Red
Cross] reported that those who had managed to escape the region were
arriving at aid stations in increasingly desperate conditions.”
Civilian homes
According to a UN fact sheet
issued on August 16, at least 15,000 civilian homes—houses and
apartments—have been destroyed. AI noted that this figure was
almost certainly an underestimate. The extent of the damage was graphically
described by AI personnel in Lebanon:
“Amnesty International
delegates visiting towns and villages in south Lebanon found that in
village after village houses had been subject to heavy artillery shelling
as well as having been destroyed by precision-guided, air-delivered
munitions. The accuracy of these munitions and their trajectory were
such that they struck one or more of the main support systems causing
the building to collapse or partially collapse under its own weight.
In Beirut a vast area of densely populated high-rise buildings, which
were home to tens of thousands of people most of whom left apparently
encouraged by Hezbollah for their own safety, was reduced to rubble
by repeated air strikes.
“According to the United
Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL), on 15 August, 80 percent
of the civilian houses had been destroyed in the village of Tayyabah,
50 percent in the villages of Markaba and Qantarah, 30 percent in Mais
al-Jebel, 20 percent in Hula, and 15 percent in Talusha. The following
day, UNIFIL reported that in the village of Ghanduriyah 80 percent of
the civilian houses had been destroyed, 60 percent in the village of
Zibqin, 50 percent in Jabal al-Butm and Bayyadah, 30 percent in Bayt
Leif, and 25 percent in Kafra.
“When Amnesty International
delegates visited the town of Bint Jbeil, in the far south of the country,
the centre of the city, where there had been a market and busy commercial
streets leading from it, was devastated. Every building on the streets
was destroyed, extensively damaged or beyond repair. The streets were
strewn with the rubble and in that rubble was clear evidence of the
cause of the damage, unexploded munitions, shrapnel and craters. The
Israeli army seemed to have used every type of munition in its arsenal,
with air-delivered munitions, artillery shelling and cluster bomb damage
in evidence.”
Infrastructure
Roads, bridges, water and
electricity supplies, sewerage plants and infrastructure, port facilities
and the Beirut international airports have been damaged or destroyed.
Throughout southern Lebanon,
wells, water mains, storage tanks, pumping stations and water treatment
works have been destroyed. Elsewhere in the country, water supplies
have been severely disrupted as the bombing of roads has ruptured pipes.
The report concluded that many of the attacks had been deliberate and
served no obvious military purpose.
At least 25 fuel depots were
destroyed and 25 petrol stations destroyed or severely damaged. By the
time of the ceasefire, the south of the county had no electricity. The
bombing of Lebanon’s largest power station at Jiyyeh not only
cut power supplies but produced an environmental disaster when 15,000
tonnes of heavy fuel oil leaked into the sea creating a massive oil
slick and polluting 150 kilometres of coastline.
In many cases, the destruction
was completely wanton. Israeli warplanes attacked facilities at all
of Lebanon’s main ports—Beirut, Tripoli and Sidon. Beirut’s
modern lighthouse was destroyed along with the old lighthouse. “It
is difficult to see what legitimate purpose these attacks could have
had, given that the Israeli navy was blockading the port anyway,”
the report declared.
Israeli air raids struck
transmission stations used by Lebanese television and radio stations,
including those with no links to Hezbollah. The Hezbollah-backed al-Manar
television station was hit repeatedly. As AI pointed out, however, the
fact that al-Manar broadcast Hezbollah propaganda did not make it a
legitimate military target under international law.
Factories and businesses
As the AI report explained,
the Israeli military deliberately targetted businesses, including the
country’s few large factories.
“Privately owned factories
and businesses across the country—economic entities whose destruction
could not be seen to offer a military advantage outweighing the damage
to civilians—have also been subjected to a series of debilitating
air strikes, dealing a further crippling blow to the shattered economy.
The Lebanese government estimated that unemployment in the country has
now reached an approximate figure of 75 percent.
“The production facilities
of companies in key industrial sectors, including Liban Lait in Baalbek,
the country’s largest dairy farm; the Maliban glass works in Ta’neil,
Zahleh; the Sada al-Din plastics factory in Tyre; the Fine tissue paper
mill in Kafr Jara, Sidon; the Tabara pharmaceutical plant in Showeifat,
Aaliyah; the Transmed shipping warehouse on the outskirts of Beirut;
and the Snow lumbermill in Showeifat, Aaliyah, have been disabled or
completely destroyed. Industry minister Pierre Gemayel said that nearly
two thirds of the industrial sector had been damaged, and at least 23
large factories and dozens of small and medium-sized factories had been
bombed.”
The devastation wrought by
the Israeli offensive in Lebanon is clearly a terrible war crime. In
concluding its report, Amnesty International called for the formation
of an international tribunal into violations of international humanitarian
law. While AI called for the actions of Hezbollah to be investigated
alongside those of the Zionist state, it would be far more appropriate
to call for an inquiry into the role of the Bush administration in aiding
and abetting Israel’s war crimes, in particular by providing and
replenishing its weaponry, and blocking any move for an immediate ceasefire.