Israeli Clusterbombing Violated International Law

Barely a month after the Israeli military cleared itself of all wrongdoing in the use of clusterbombs against Lebanon during its 2006 war with Hezbollah, the Winograd commission into the war has found just the opposite – that the weapons and the way they were used clearly violated international law.

From the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs:

“The Winograd Committee said it did not find any evidence to prove that soldiers fired cluster bombs at civilian targets or that civilians were injured by the bomblets during the war, but it did say that firing the bombs at built-up areas – even if they were being used by Hezbollah as military posts at the time – “does not comply with the rationale on which the restrictions [in Israeli and international law] on the use of cluster [bombs] is based.”

The committee, set up by the Israeli government to investigate the war, found that firing the bombs into residential areas, even if the residents had left, was not an “acceptable widening” of the rules, as civilians would be hurt.

The Winograd Comittee had five members, who were appointed by the cabinet about a month after the war ended, and was headed by retired judge Eliyahu Winograd. The committee’s mandate was to investigate and reach conclusion on the conduct of political leaders as well as the military and defence systems.

In the final report, it said that the cluster bombs were inaccurate and spread out over a wide area; not all the bomblets exploded and continue to cause harm long after they were fired.

About 90 percent of the cluster bombs were fired in the last days of the war, when it was clear a ceasefire would soon be announced. Over four million bomblets were fired during the war, according to the UN.”

The UN says unexploded cluster bomblets such as those shown above continue to exact a toll on Lebanese civilians having killed 30 and wounded 200 since the war ended.

The Israeli military still refuses to assist UN workers trying to clear the remaining weapons, finding ten new sites every month.

“All these weapons systems are computerised and grid references are entered before the bombs drop. Not receiving the cluster bomb strike data from the Israelis remains our biggest obstacle to clearance,” Dalya Farran, a spokeswoman for the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre for South Lebanon (MACSL), told IRIN. The UN estimates that Israel rained down around four million bomblets – most US-supplied – onto south Lebanon in the last three days of its 2006 July war with Hezbollah fighters, when a ceasefire had already been agreed.

And this, supposedly, is our ally and friend.

 

Torture, No – Terror, Absolutely

The men shown here are hunting for unexploded cluster bomblets from Israeli weapons fired into southern Lebanon. The UN reports they’re still finding an average of ten new sites every month. Israel, which left the Lebanese countryside littered with these weapons, won’t tell the UN where they are. From the UN Human Affairs Office news service, IRIN:

“Deminers clearing Israeli-dropped cluster bombs in south Lebanon are turning up an average of 10 new sites per month, while Israel continues to ignore requests for data that would assist clearing the estimated one million unexploded bomblets, which continue to kill and maim civilians and decimate rural livelihoods. A single cluster bomb can disperse hundreds of bomblets.

All these weapons systems are computerised and grid references are entered before the bombs drop. Not receiving the cluster bomb strike data from the Israelis remains our biggest obstacle to clearance,” Dalya Farran, a spokeswoman for the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre for South Lebanon (MACSL), told IRIN. The UN estimates that Israel rained down around four million bomblets – most US-supplied – onto south Lebanon in the last three days of its 2006 July war with Hezbollah fighters, when a ceasefire had already been agreed.

Cluster bombs, or sub-munitions, are legal, and manufacturers say their failure rates should be between 10-15 percent. The UN estimates in general the weapons fail between 20-30 percent of the time. In south Lebanon MACSL estimates between 30-40 percent of the bombs dropped failed to explode, rising up to 80 percent in some places.

The high failure rate may partly be explained by Israel’s use of Vietnam-war era munitions, such as the M42, M77 and Blue 63, all US or Israeli-made and the MZD2, made in China, many of which MACSL said had gone beyond their expiry date by the time they were dropped on Lebanon.

The Israelis also dropped the new M85 cluster bomb that is designed to self destruct if it fails to explode on impact and which manufacturers say has a 1 percent failure rate. MACSL’s Dalya Farran said they estimate the bomb, used for the first time on battlefields in Lebanon, had a 10 percent failure rate.”

Refusing to assist in clearing these weapons or at least disclosing where they can be found is state terrorism, plain and simple. These weapons are serving no military purpose unless the Israeli government and its military see some benefit in killing and maiming Lebanese civilians.

 

It Always Was About the Oil

The Lebanese paper, The Daily Star, speaks for a lot of the Middle East in asking why Bush invaded Iraq:

What is Bush’s cause? To the people of this region, Bush’s cause has long been painfully evident: to gain control of Iraq’s oil resources. Indeed, ever since the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has been aggressively pressuring the Iraqi government to pass a new oil law, ostensibly to promote “reconciliation” among the country’s divided communities. In fact, Bush has made the passage of a new oil law one of his key “benchmarks” for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s government.

Members of the Bush administration have argued that the new law will serve to “unify” the country by giving Iraqis a “shared stake in Iraq’s future.” In fact the bill has proven to facilitate Iraqi unity: It has drawn fierce opposition from lawmakers representing the country’s divided Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish communities, as well as from all five of the country’s trade unions, which represent hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

The Iraqis are understandably concerned about the draft law because oil is Iraq’s economic lifeblood: It accounts for nearly 70 percent of GDP and more than 95 percent of government revenues. But the draft oil law would take over three-fourths of Iraq’s oil fields out of the hands of the Iraqi government and put them in the pockets of Western companies. These companies would not be obliged under the new law to meet minimum standards in partnering with Iraqi firms, hiring Iraqi workers or investing profits in the Iraqi economy. The law also allows for production-sharing agreements, corporate-friendly deals that have been rejected by every other country in this region, and with good reason: They grant foreign firms control of resources and profits for as long as 20 to 30 years, or an entire generation.

The Americans invaded Iraq on the basis of lies that Bush concocted about Al-Qaeda and weapons of mass destruction. Now that Bush has completely shattered the Iraqi nation, he wants to deprive the Iraqi people of one of the only means they have to repair it. The question now becomes: Is this a cause that the American people can support in good conscience?