Lebanon War Question and Answer

Doesn't Israel have the right to defend itself?

 

One has the right to self-defense if one is not oneself guilty of aggression. So, for example, the Soviet Union could not invoke self-defense when its occupation troops in Afghanistan were attacked by Afghan mujahideen. Instead, it ought to have withdrawn its troops. Likewise, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is illegal and unjust and Israel can't claim self-defense when Palestinians struggle by legitimate means to end the occupation. The proper Israeli response to such Palestinian actions is not self-defense, but full withdrawal from the occupied territories.

 

The situation with Lebanon is different; whereas in Palestine, Israel was engaged in an ongoing aggression, in Lebanon the Israeli violations of Lebanese rights prior to July 12, 2006, were far less substantial, and less immediate.

 

But even when a country's own prior acts aren't contributory causes of an attack, international law places various limitations on the right of self-defense to that attack.

 

One limitation is that the right of self-defense is meant to give nations the right to take measures to repel an armed attack until the UN Security Council can act to stop the aggression. If an enemy's tanks are hurtling toward your capital city, any delay in responding would mean further losses and further harm. In the case of the Hezbollah raid across the Israeli border on July 12, 2006, the act of aggression took place and was over; it was not an ongoing aggression to which any delay in responding would have meant additional harm to Israel. Once the immediate danger is over, international law requires that victims of aggression bring their cases to the Security Council for action.

 

Of course, the Security Council is not always able to act. But the main obstacle to Security Council action has generally been the veto wielded by Washington on behalf of Israel.

 

A second requirement of international law is that acts taken in self-defense must be proportionate to the offense.

 

But, to quote Representative Jerrold L. Nadler of New York, 'Since when should a response to aggression and murder be proportionate?'[1] Or, since when does the side which starts a war get to decide how it will be fought?

 

Wouldn't we consider it disproportionate if the police bombed an apartment building in an effort to catch a murderer? Or to carpet bomb the area of a city which we thought (or knew) to be harboring the person or persons responsible for a murder? The requirement of proportionality makes good moral sense even when dealing with murderers.

 

Consider our reaction in an international case. India has been subject to many terrorist attacks. The latest train bombings in Mumbai may well be the work of home-grown terrorists radicalized by Hindu pogroms against Muslims. But probably some of the terrorist acts -- like the assault on the Indian parliament in New Dehli in December 2001 -- involved a Pakistani role. Should India have launched a major military assault on the jihadi training camps in Pakistan, not to mention a broader assault throughout Pakistan, killing numerous civilians and destroying the country's infrastructure? Anyone concerned about world peace would surely have urged India to refrain from such an action. Starting a war that would lead to massive numbers of deaths in response to a far smaller-scale provocation would clearly have been disproportionate.[2]

 

Consider another example. In June 2006, the Lebanese government announced that it had broken an Israeli-run assassination team operating within Lebanon.[3] What would our reaction have been if the Lebanese government had responded to this Israeli aggression (assuming it was convincingly proved) by initiating air and missile strikes throughout Israel, killing hundreds of civilians, wrecking the civilian infrastructure, and driving more than a quarter of the population from their homes? Surely we would consider such a response by Beirut to be wholly disproportionate, even in the face of a clear provocation.

 

But can any country accept having rockets raining down on its citizens?

 

No country should have to suffer rockets raining down on its citizens. Nor should any country have to suffer far more lethal air raids and artillery shelling on its citizens, as Lebanon is suffering today. But in any event this Israeli war was not launched to stop Hezbollah rocket fire from Lebanon. That rocket fire was a response to the massive Israeli attack on Lebanon, including its power plants, its bridges and roads, its ports, its cities and villages.

 

Look at the timing. Here is the complete list of Katyusha and other rockets launched from Lebanon against civilian areas of Israel between May 2000, when Israel announced its withdrawal from southern Lebanon, and July 12, 2006, as derived from reports of the UN Secretary General based on reports from UN observers at the border.[4]

 

Rocket attacks on civilians from Lebanon, May 2000-July 12, 2006[a]

 

date	number	result	responsibility
31 March 2002	3	no damage or casualties mentioned	probably launched by Palestinians
2 April 2002	at least 1	no damage or casualties mentioned	unknown elements
6 April 2002	4	5 civilians wounded in divided border village of Ghajar	"suspected Palestinian shooters"
7 October 2003	3	2 landed in Lebanon killing a child; 1 landed in Israel causing no damage or casualties	"unidentified elements"
7 June 2004	3-4	none hit Israel	"unidentified elements presumed likely to be Palestinians"[b]
9 Oct. 2004	1	no casualties or property damage	"generally believed to be Palestinian militants"
28 Oct. 2004	1	no casualties or property damage	"generally believed to be Palestinian militants"
15 Nov. 2004	1	no casualties or property damage	"generally believed to be Palestinian militants"
11 May 2005	1	property damage, no casualties	"unidentified armed elements"
12 May 2005	2	"no impact reported by UNIFIL. While UNIFIL was unable to verify this claim, local residents reported hearing explosions."	IDF[c] claimed Hezbollah responsible
25 Aug. 2005	2	no casualties	Hezbollah denied responsibility; Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility
27 Dec. 2005	4	some damage, no casualties	those responsible not identified, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida's leader in Iraq claimed responsibility.
28 May 2006 a.m.	at least 8	3 landed in IDF position, wounding one [unclear where others aimed; no other casualties or injuries mentioned]	Hezbollah denied involve-ment. Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Lebanon initially claimed responsibility in retaliation for the killing of a leading member in Lebanon and his brother on 26 May. The claim was retracted later that day.[d]
28 May 2006 p.m.	rocket fire	no Israeli civilian casualties mentioned	"unidentified armed elements fired small arms" wounding one IDF soldier. No claim of responsibility, and Hezbollah denied any involvement. The incident triggered a major exchange of fire. The IDF used air strikes, artillery, mortar, and tank fire, wounding two Lebanese civilians. Hezbollah "responded with rocket, mortar and small-arms fire."
12 July 2006	"several"	none mentioned[e]	Hezbollah, as part of a diversion for its cross-border abduction operation

a. The reports mention several instances when the Lebanese government or the UN observers discovered and disarmed Katyushas: March 2005, June 2005, Dec. 30, 2005.

b. In response, Israel attacked sites of the Palestinian group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- General Command.

c. Israeli Defense Forces. Of course, as with the U.S. Department of Defense, whether the Israeli armed forces are engaged in offense or defense is an empirical matter and not something to be determined based on the word "defense" in their title.

d. In response, Israel attacked sites of the Palestinian group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- General Command. The Jerusalem Post reported that "The apparent pretext for the May 28 attacks was the decision by Islamic Jihad to blame Israel for the assassination of one of its leaders in Sidon two days earlier."[5] The Lebanese government claimed to have the confession of a leading member of an assassination ring established by Israel.[6]

e. The Israeli military claimed that several civilians were wounded.[7]

 

This table makes a number of points clear. First, Not a single Israeli civilian was killed by a rocket from Lebanon from May 2000 to July 12, 2006. And second, until May 28, 2006, there was not a single confirmed rocket fired at civilians by Hezbollah. (True, in some of the cases where the responsible party was unidentified, it might have been Hezbollah, but that's inconsistent with the group's usual policy of proudly taking responsibility for its attacks.) Often the perpetrators were Palestinians, responding to events in Palestine (for example, the bloody Israeli offensive on the West Bank in Spring 2002).

 

On May 28, 2006, during the exchange of fire between the Israeli military and Hezbollah in which two Lebanese but no Israeli civilians were injured, Israeli civilians in the north were ordered by the IDF "to take to the safety of bomb shelters -- some so out of use that it was difficult to locate the keys."[8]

 

So this war can hardly be justified as a war to stop Hezbollah from launching Katyushas against Israeli civilians. Moreover, the simplest way for Israel to stop the rockets that are now hitting its population is to accept a ceasefire. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has declared that his organization would stop firing its rockets if Israel stopped its air-raids.[9]

 

Are you comparing Hezbollah's indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets, where the intention is to kill civilians, with Israel's attacks on military targets where sometimes civilians are unintentionally and regrettably killed?

 

It is a war crime to fire rockets, as Hezbollah is doing, at civilian targets. But this is not the only war crime, nor the war crime with the greatest civilian toll.

 

It is worth thinking about why we categorize Hezbollah's rocket attacks as war crimes. What if Hezbollah had announced that they were aiming at military targets (which surely exist in northern Israel, including within cities[10])? As Amnesty International notes,[11] even if the rocket strikes were aimed at military targets "they would be indiscriminate attacks, given the nature of the weapons used" and hence war crimes. Now even though Israeli weapons are far more accurate than the Hezbollah rockets, they are by no means surgical. Of the more than 600 reported Lebanese war deaths by July 28, a majority have been women and children[12]; UNICEF estimates that more than a third have been children.[13] So, we can conclude that "given the nature of the weapons used" by the IDF, Israel is guilty of (at best) indiscriminate attacks, and hence war crimes.

 

Hezbollah rockets sometimes contain ball bearings which are designed to increase the harm to human beings.[14] Israel has used artillery-fired cluster munitions in populated areas.[15] Both of these are likely war crimes, the only significant difference being that the latter probably have had far more lethal consequences.

 

Here is what Human Rights Watch concluded on the basis of extensive on-the-ground research:

 

"This report documents serious violations of international humanitarian law (the laws of war) by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Lebanon between July 12 and July 27, 2006, as well as the July 30 attack in Qana. During this period, the IDF killed an estimated 400 people, the vast majority of them civilians, and that number climbed to over 500 by the time this report went to print. The Israeli government claims it is taking all possible measures to minimize civilian harm, but the cases documented here reveal a systematic failure by the IDF to distinguish between combatants and civilians.

 

"Since the start of the conflict, Israeli forces have consistently launched artillery and air attacks with limited or dubious military gain but excessive civilian cost. In dozens of attacks, Israeli forces struck an area with no apparent military target. In some cases, the timing and intensity of the attack, the absence of a military target, as well as return strikes on rescuers, suggest that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians.

 

***

 

"By consistently failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians, Israel has violated one of the most fundamental tenets of the laws of war: the duty to carry out attacks on only military targets. The pattern of attacks during the Israeli offensive in Lebanon suggests that the failures cannot be explained or dismissed as mere accidents; the extent of the pattern and the seriousness of the consequences indicate the commission of war crimes."[16]

 

But doesn't Hezbollah place its fighters and its weapons amid civilians, making Hezbollah -- and not Israel -- responsible for any civilian deaths?

 

International humanitarian law is quite clear that while it is a violation of the laws of war to intermingle military activity with civilians, the other side is still under an obligation to minimize harm to civilians. This is common sense: if a criminal was firing on police from an apartment building, would the police be justified in calling in air strikes to level the building? Of course the criminal was behaving improperly, but this hardly justifies the authorities in disregarding the welfare of the population.

 

But there are three further points to note. First, the Israeli claim of Hezbollah using civilians as shields is overstated. As Human Rights Watch reported,

 

"The Israeli government claims that it targets only Hezbollah, and that fighters from the group are using civilians as human shields, thereby placing them at risk. Human Rights Watch found no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack. Hezbollah occasionally did store weapons in or near civilian homes and fighters placed rocket launchers within populated areas or near U.N. observers, which are serious violations of the laws of war because they violate the duty to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian casualties. However, those cases do not justify the IDF's extensive use of indiscriminate force which has cost so many civilian lives. In none of the cases of civilian deaths documented in this report is there evidence to suggest that Hezbollah forces or weapons were in or near the area that the IDF targeted during or just prior to the attack."[17]

 

Second, the broad Israeli definition of military targets makes an intermingling of military and civilian activity inevitable. Israel defines as legitimate targets the private residences of Hezbollah political leaders; these, not surprisingly, are located in residential areas. (By similar logic, Hezbollah would be justified in targeting the residential sectors of Tel Aviv where Israeli politicians live.) Israel defines as legitimate targets Hezbollah political offices -- recall that Hezbollah is and has been a legal political party in Lebanon, with members of parliament, and two members of the cabinet. Israel defines Hezbollah's TV station as a legitimate military target

 

Third, Israel has been directly and intentionally targeting civilian infrastructure, which has caused an immense humanitarian crisis. Sometimes there is the pretense that such attacks are militarily necessary, but often the truth has been acknowledged. Israeli army chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz, for example, warned that if the abducted soldiers were not returned, the IDF "would target infrastructure and 'turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years.'"[18] The Israeli offensive, said Halutz, "was open-ended. 'Nothing is safe [in Lebanon], as simple as that,' he said."[19]

 

As Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, notes,

 

"International humanitarian law permits attacks on infrastructure only if it is making an effective military contribution, and the military benefits of its destruction outweigh the civilian costs. That case is difficult, if not impossible, to make for the extensive attacks on electrical facilities, bridges and roadways throughout the country."[20]

 

The International Crisis Group reports that Israel has targeted

 

"economic infrastructure bearing little or no relation to Hizbollah; the airport (far more than necessary to meet any reasonable military goal); Beirut's entire southern suburb (far beyond Hizbollah's infrastructure); the ports of Beirut and Jounieh (in Christian territory); industrial plants; bridges leading to the south (presumably in order to cut it off, interfere with Hizbollah's resupply, prevent militants from moving the Israeli captives around and alienate the local population, but all this at enormous humanitarian cost); [and] the army, including check points in Christian areas (highly questionable since the army has stayed out of the conflict, avoided using its anti-aircraft capacity despite the onslaught, focused on maintaining domestic law and order and, above all, remains the only instrument capable of extending the state's authority over the country as a whole).[21]

 

Israeli attacks on fuel supplies have forced the closing of hospitals; attacks on roads have interfered with delivering urgently-needed humanitarian aid:

 

"Getting emergency United Nations humanitarian aid to the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese displaced by the worsening conflict became even harder today after the UN said that Israeli shelling had severed the vital supply route between Syria and Beirut, as well as forcing the cancellation of all but one convoy to the devastated south of the country."[22]

 

But didn't Israel provide warning to Lebanese civilians?

 

Warnings to civilians are proper, but do not absolve Israel of responsibility for war crimes.

 

First, as the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights has pointed out,

 

"Many people are simply unable to leave southern Lebanon because they have no transport, because roads have been destroyed, because they are ill or elderly, because they must care for others who are physically unable to make the journey, or because they simply have no where else to go."[23]

And given that Israel has conducted bombing raids throughout the country -- 33 farm workers were killed in a single raid in the northeast of the country on August 4[24] -- many might despair of ever reaching safety.

 

Second, warnings do not entitle combatants to declare areas free fire zones, where anything goes. As Roth notes, if failure to heed warnings justified the creation of free fire zones, "Palestinian militant groups might 'warn' all settlers to leave Israeli settlements and then be justified in treating as legitimate targets those who remained."[25]

And, we might add, it would mean that if Hezbollah warned all civilians to leave northern Israel, then it would be justified in blanketing the area with Katyushas.

 

Despite the clear legal prohibition against doing so, Israeli officials have announced that they are treating sections of Lebanon precisely as free fire zones -- even though many non-combatants still remain there.[26]

 

Are you saying that the Israeli-Lebanese border was quiet for the past six years?