“The casual references to ‘Hezbollah neighbourhoods,'” Arabist reader SP rightly said in an email exchange, very much “echo the idea of ‘VC villages’ in Vietnam.”
Civilian toll raises questions
Israel, criticized for killing hundreds of Lebanese, says Hezbollah stores missiles in residences
Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, July 20, 2006As Israel has steadily escalated its military assault on Hezbollah, so has the criticism about the rising number of civilian deaths resulting from its campaign.
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, accusing Israel of indiscriminately targeting civilians, said Wednesday that his country “has been torn to shreds” by Israel’s aerial bombardment, which he said has killed 300 Lebanese, mostly civilians, wounded 1,000 and displaced half a million more.
“Can the international community stand by while such callous retribution by the state of Israel is inflicted on us?” Saniora asked. Israeli officials have said the intense military campaign is necessary to root out the infrastructure of an organization that started the conflict by its unprovoked killing of eight Israeli soldiers and the kidnapping of two more last week. Israel denies its air strikes deliberately target Lebanese civilians.
Twenty-nine Israelis are reported to have died in eight days of fighting, including 14 soldiers and 15 civilians. The civilians were killed by Hezbollah rocket and missile attacks on Israeli cities and towns.
Capt. Jacob Dallal, the Israeli Defense Forces spokesman, said Israeli forces were doing “everything to minimize” civilian casualties in Lebanon. Hezbollah fighters “don’t care” about the deaths of Lebanese civilians, he said. “They just want to wreak havoc in classic terrorist style.”
But could Israel’s campaign, however justified, be waged without inflicting such a high number of Lebanese civilian casualties?
Some military analysts say it probably cannot. “Hezbollah is so intertwined with the society and community, it’s very difficult to try to destroy the Hezbollah infrastructure without such collateral damage,” said Babak Yektafar, an expert on the Middle East at the Center for Defense Information in Washington. “If (Israeli forces) were more concerned with collateral damage, they wouldn’t be as effective in destroying Hezbollah infrastructure.”
Analysts agree that some Hezbollah offices and command posts bombed by Israel are so close to civilian targets that casualties among noncombatants are inevitable. Some Hezbollah offices, for example, share buildings with apartments where civilians live, Yektafar said; others cluster in houses in crowded residential neighborhoods. Many of the mosques Hezbollah supports are community centers where elders meet and where families take their children to study the Quran.
In the densely packed Shiite neighborhoods in Beirut’s southern suburbs — Hezbollah’s bedrock of support — Israeli air strikes in the past week have reduced entire blocks to rubble, collapsing facades of multistory apartment houses into the streets.
“Certain neighborhoods are Hezbollah neighborhoods; you can’t hit Hezbollah without hitting civilians,” said Mark Burgess, a terrorism expert at the Brussels office of the Washington-based World Security Institute.
A more debated assertion, put forward by some analysts and Israeli officials, say Hezbollah stores arms and ammunition in residential houses and often fires rockets at Israel using civilians who live in the houses as human shields.
“The reality is, we’re fighting an organization that stores the missiles it launches against us in people’s homes,” Dallal said. “They do it on purpose.”
Christopher Hamilton, a counterterrorism expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Hezbollah had set up special structures inside civilian compounds and fired missiles from inside.
“You have a special structure they build in the house itself so they could shoot a rocket without being in the open, camouflaged so that they couldn’t be seen,” Hamilton said. “The people who died in these houses were civilians, but they were Hezbollah supporters, since the rockets were there.”
But other experts say Hezbollah has no need to use civilian houses because it has an elaborate network of bunkers and missile launchers in deserted areas throughout the country.
“This is not some cynical Saddam Hussein plan of putting missiles in hospitals,” said Nicholas Noe, the founder of the Beirut-based Mideastwire.com, an online bulletin of Arabic and Farsi media. He said Hezbollah has such carefully established firing positions in the sparsely populated southern Lebanon that it has “no reason strategically … of putting Katyusha rockets in civilian houses.”
Such differences among experts show how little is actually known about how Hezbollah operates, said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a military think-tank in Washington. Hezbollah is small — Pike estimates it has about 500 full-time combatants — and maintains a very tight internal security and secrecy.
“That’s small relative to an American street gang,” Pike said.
Other analysts note that such limited knowledge also may affect the precision with which Israel is waging its campaign — resulting in air strikes on locations which have nothing to do with Hezbollah. Some air strikes have hit minivans and other vehicles, causing multiple casualties.
“They say they are striking Hezbollah strongholds, but the question you have to ask: What kind of intelligence, exactly, Israel has on the ground in Lebanon?” said Noe, who researches Hezbollah and has lived in Beirut for the past three years. An air strike Wednesday on two well-drilling trucks in the upscale Christian Beirut neighborhood of Achrafiyeh suggests that some of Israel’s intelligence might be faulty. The trucks, with their drills folded, resemble rocket launchers. The strike destroyed the trucks but harmed no civilians.
A Chronicle correspondent who briefly toured the neighborhoods after the Israeli bombings discovered no shells, gun emplacements, caches of weapon, or any other evidence that Hezbollah had been using the bombed buildings for any military purpose.
Such examples point to the dangers of using air power, which is not always accurate or precise, especially if based on faulty intelligence or lack of intelligence.
Only if Israel used “real-time intelligence from human assets on the ground” to find hiding places could it seriously limit the danger from Hezbollah’s rockets without a ground offensive, Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese army brigadier general, told the Associated Press.
The Israelis have hinted broadly at just such a campaign — which is what Hezbollah wants, according to Fred Burton, a counterterrorism expert at Strategic Forecasting, a security consulting agency.
“You’ve got an organization that in reality is not going to be able to stand toe-to-toe with the Israelis’ defense forces, but they are very effective at falling back into a guerrilla-type campaign, conducting insurgency operations almost like we see today in Iraq,” Burton said.
Should that occur, Lebanese civilian casualties are bound to increase.
“In general, yes, there is a lot of collateral damage — (including) people who hate He
zbollah and have nothing to do with the conflict,” Hamilton said. “This happens in conflicts.”
Here is also another BBC report on the Israeli army’s same tactic employed in Gaza.
Palestinians die in Israeli raids
Two Palestinians have been killed in a fresh Israeli operation in a refugee camp in central Gaza.Palestinian officials said one person was shot dead in the Mughazi camp. An earlier Israeli air attack on the camp left one dead and 20 injured.
Israel has also dropped leaflets in Gaza warning anyone hiding weapons in their homes that they are in danger.
The offensive in Gaza was launched after an Israeli soldier was captured by Palestinian militants last month.
The fate of Corporal Gilad Shalit remains unknown but Israeli officials believe he is still alive.
The Gaza offensive also aims to stop rocket launches by Palestinian militants, who say such attacks are in retaliation for Israeli action against them.
‘New policy’
Unnamed Israeli military officials told the Associated Press news agency that Israel was adopting a new policy of attacking homes in civilian areas where weapons, including homemade rockets, were stored.
They also told the news agency that civilians should be aware of the actions of their neighbours and, if militants were storing weapons in the area, their neighbourhoods could be attacked.
The warning leaflets, dropped in towns and villages throughout the coastal territory, said: “The life of all those who are holding military equipment and ammunition in their homes is in danger and they should leave the premises for their safety and that of their families.
“The Israeli defence force will strike and destroy all sites and buildings housing ammunition and military material.”
In a separate aerial attack in southern Gaza, Israeli warplanes blew up three tunnels, which they claimed were being used by militants to bring weapons into the territory.
Dear All,
After all the talk is done, it’s very simple
1. Return the soldiers
2. Stop shelling Israel
and it stops.
If its beyond you, take the deaths and stop complaining.
SP has hit the nail on the head- and it is the same mindset that is (mis)guiding things in Iraq. This talk about Hezbollah rockets hidden in private houses (true or not) is the same kind of thing that guides the house to house searches in Iraq by the US army- it’s basically the same – if everyone is potentially the enemy, then there are no civilian casualties because everyone is a potential engaged combattant. Likewise for the one engaging in the fight- everyone behind him is seen as a potential assailant and so it goes.
Emmanuel,
You know very well that things will not stop. Israel occupied Lebanon for over 20 years, it still occupied the Gaza. The Israeli army and special forces have engaged in kidnappings, targetted assassinations and land acquisitions, no matter what goes on. Inside Israel, many Arabs (and Arab Israelis) live in second class conditions.
Israel needs to stop what it is doing as well or deal with the resitance and stop trying to portray itself as the eternal victim.
Another thought, give back the aid money the US pours into Israel and let’s see how long Israel can actually last as a viable state, living at the level mnat of its citizens do. My guess is, there would be some significant adjustments made.
Zazou, you are apparently living in a state of denial. Israel does not occupy Gaza, and has no interest at all in Lebanon. Stop attacking Israel and all will be over immediately.
Regarding the US aid, someone already explained it – it amounts to close to nothing in the Israeli economy. The US aid is a military aid, not an economic one, and could be suppressed today without many consequences (just some more budget cuts, like there have been in the past 5 years). In fact, it is an israeli interest to stop all this aid. Netanyahu is the one that asked the US to stop the (tiny) economic aid in 1997 because it was hurting Israel on the long term.
I heard an Israeli solider stationed near the Lebanon border say in a radio interview last night, when asked how he felt about possibly killing civilians, say that “people who live in those areas support Hezbollah, and you should know if you are in a Hezbollah area you will be a target. People should choose better where they live.” (paraphrasing, but the last line is verbatim – I remember it because it stunned me).
On CNN, Anderson Cooper made a big show of venturing into Southern Beirut and talked about how dangerous it was, how one couldn’t go there unescorted or without informing the local HA people, because it was “Hezbollah territory” where the reach of the Lebanese government does not extend. And yet military and other experts they interviewed said that no-one really knows very much about HA’s military set-up or where they store weapons, it’s a lot of guesswork.
By the same account, everyone living in a part of an American city where gangs rule the roost should be legitimate targets of violence against the gangs, or anyone living in Israel should be a legitimate target for reprisals against the Israeli army’s capture of Palestinians, etc.
Hi Michael, are we sure the US doesn’t give Israel any economic aid? I know for a while there was about a billion dollars of it and then they came up with a deal to reduce the econ aid by 5% and increase the military aid by 10% or something like that, but I was under the impression the econ aid still existed, does anyone know for sure?
The total economic aid to Israel for 2006 is as follows:
Military: 2,280billion Financial: 240.0 (in millions US $)
source:http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/U.S._Assistance_to_Israel1.html
IN 2006, Israel asked for an additional 1.2 billion.
The military assistance equals roughly 24% of Israel’s defense budget- a substantial amount by any calculation. If that money were to dry up, the amount needed to replace it would have to come from somewhere within the economic structure – infrastructure would suffer, salaries to government employees would have to be adjusted down, social welfare programs would experience serious setbacks.
The GDP is estimated by the CIA to be $24,600 (2005), whereas the GDP for Egyt, the next largest recipient of US foreign aid is $3,900 (2005 est.)
for comparison sake, here are a few others:
US $41,800 (2005 est.)
France $29,900 (2005 est.)
Italy $29,200 (2005 est.)
Lebanon (until last week) $6,200 (2005 est.)
Australia $31,900 (2005 est.)
In 1999, Israel had a higher GDP per capita than Spain and was ranked between Ireland and Andorra (CIA factbook).
So the aid is substantial for a country whose GDP is not that far behind most countries in Europe.
According to the World Bank, in 2003-2004, the following countries were substantial donors to Israel (in order)
The US
Germany
France
EC
Italy
Netherlands
Spain (GDP PP 27,666)
Japan(GDP PP 35,787)
Switzerland (GDP PP 50, 524)
Greece (GDP PP 20, 282)
As far as Israel’s interest in Lebanon- you must be joking to think that they have “no interest.” You don’t destroy the majority of the infrastructure of a country in one week , if you “have no interest.”
emanuel appel | July 22nd, 2006 at 5:39 am
dear Immanuel:
it’s very simple, really:
1) release the innocent prisoners and stop the random arrests;
2) recognize a viable, contiguous Palestinian State (and negotiate for the water Israel’s appropriated…
and the raids and the killings stop…
if that’s beyond you, accept the carnage and shut the fuck up…
simple…
@emanuel, micheal
you want to say: in case they return the soldiers and stop shelling isreal, israel will give up all illegal settlements, leave the golan heights, stop buildig the wall or even demolish it again, return lands to the rightful owners and give economic assistance to gaza and lebanon to rebuild vital infra structure?
no? i did not think so.
so what do you expect? do you really believe, it is possible t destroy hizbollah? i mean, on which planet do you live? ever heart the term history? in an assymetric war, all you need is some dedicated people and quiet primitive weapons to seriously attack the other side. and what do you think happens, when you kill mothers, brothers, children, neighbours, friends, etc. most of whom just try to make a living and have more or less o affiliation to politcs (like most local people all over the world)? exactly, you crate more dedicated people, who will be ready to die in an assymetric war.
olmert is weak and that’s why he has to pretend to b a tough guy. may be israel needs a strong lader like sharon, because he does not have to behave like a total prick the whole time. the only thing i do not understand is, why does the over whelming majority of israelis support this nonsense.
and don’t come up with that argument “you can’t understand when you dn’t live here.” i have been in war zones where more than 10’000 people died in approximately two weeks (eritrea / ethiopia war 2000). this whole mess started because of 2 soldiers… two!
i do not understand what the israeli leadership is thinking currently, i really do not.
moritz
On the point that Israel must recognize a Palestinian state, I think it’s worth pointing out that we’re kidding ourselves if we think that’s going to do much to convince a Hamas-led government to lay down their arms and peacefully co-exist with the Jewish state.
Israel’s hands are very, very far from clean, but what exactly do you do when the only solution acceptable to your negotiating partner is, “you guys leave and we get it all?” Even if you believe that’s a justified position, it means that talk is pointless and only war will settle the issue, one way or another.
Adam,
Well that is the debate isn’t it? Does Hamas really advocate the total destruction of Israel? When put that way, there only seems to be one way for Israel to deal with that government. But if, as a number of people on this site have said, Hamas would be willing to recognize and deal with the Israel, just not from the same position of weakness as the previous government, then there is something to talk about. For my part, I think Hamas is stupid not to articulate more clearly their conditions for dealing with Israel and just let themselves be painted as rabid “throw-jews-into-the-sea” kind of people.
Adam:
Ismail Haniya said in February:
“If Israel withdraws to the ’67 borders, then we will establish a peace in stages…. If Israel declares that it will give the Palestinian people a state and give them back all their rights, then we are ready to recognize them.”
http://tinyurl.com/hb7xz
Paul and Adam, I think Israel has had a tendency to not want to work with whatever Palestinian group was strong at a given moment (remember they preferred Islamists to the PLO once upon a time, believing that Islamists would not be as nationalist), and to then blame the other side for being stubborn. I think this Hamas govt showed a noticeable toning down of its rhetoric in its first few months after coming to power, till it was essentially not allowed to function.
Adam, you said “what exactly do you do when the only solution acceptable to your negotiating partner is, “you guys leave and we get it all?â€� It’s funny but you could have said that just as easily about the Israeli state over the years, which never wanted to accept equal numbers of Jews and Arabs or a shared homeland, but rather wanted a Jewish state and has used all means possible (from denying refugee rights to destroying homes to not allowing more than a carefully controlled and small number of Arabs to live in Israel) to make sure that Israel “gets it all.” It’s easy to see others as recalcitrant and our own actions as justified. There is also an extreme contingent within Israel that believes the land is only for the Jews, but the democratic process has kept them in check – why not hope for the same from the Palestinians? Are there really any other options to stop the violence? Oh wait, you don’t want to stop the violence, you don’t want there to be a Palestinian state and you want to settle the conflict through war. Congratulations, you have now become just what you accuse “the other side” of.
Great comments, I want to highlight my favorite:
@emanuel, micheal
you want to say: in case they return the soldiers and stop shelling isreal, israel will give up all illegal settlements, leave the golan heights, stop buildig the wall or even demolish it again, return lands to the rightful owners and give economic assistance to gaza and lebanon to rebuild vital infra structure?
no? i did not think so.
bzapt! (Egyptian for “precisely”)
Israel and the international community deserves much blame for having isolated Hamas when it had moved considerably in the space of a few months towards accepting the 2002 Beirut declaration as the basis for negotiations. That meant it did not want to return to the exact status quo ante bellum, but was ready to negotiate on borders.
And while everyone is always ready to slam Syria, it’s become pretty clear that Israel has absolutely no intention of returning the Golan Heights…
Emanual and other Israel supporters – the trouble with trying to pick and choose which parts of international law and UN resolutions you’d like to use is that you get yourself into the following situation:
Convenient UN:
The text of United Nations Security Council resolution 1559 (2004) calls for foreign troops to leave Lebanon and for Lebanese sovereignty to be respected:
The Security Council,
Recalling all its previous resolutions on Lebanon, in particular resolutions 425 (1978) and 426 (1978) of 19 March 1978, resolution 520 (1982) of 17 September 1982, and resolution 1553 (2004) of 29 July 2004 as well as the statements of its president on the situation in Lebanon, in particular the statement of 18 June 2000 (S/PRST/2000/21),
Reiterating its strong support for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon within its internationally territorially recognised borders,
Noting the determination of Lebanon to ensure the withdrawal of all non-Lebanese forces from Lebanon,
Gravely concerned at the continued presence of armed militias in Lebanon, which prevent the Lebanese government from exercising its full sovereignty over all Lebanese territory,
Reaffirming the importance of the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory,
Mindful of the upcoming Lebanese presidential elections and underlining the importance of free and fair elections according to Lebanese constitutional rules devised without foreign interference or influence,
1. Reaffirms its call for the strict respect of the sovereignty, territorial integrity, unity and political independence of Lebanon under the sole and exclusive authority of the Government of Lebanon throughout Lebanon;
2. Calls upon all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon;
3. Calls for the disbanding and disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias;
4. Supports the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory;
5. Declares its support for a free and fair electoral process in Lebanon’s upcoming presidential election conducted according to Lebanese constitutional rules devised without foreign interference or influence;
6. Calls upon all parties concerned to co-operate fully and urgently with the Security Council for the full implementation of this and all relevant resolutions concerning the restoration of the territorial integrity, full sovereignty, and political independence of Lebanon;
7. Requests that the secretary general report to the Security Council within 30 days on the implementation by the parties of this resolution and decides to remain actively seized of this matter.
Inconvenient UN:
UN relief chief accuses Israel of violating humanitarian law
(AFP)
23 July 2006
BEIRUT – UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egeland on Sunday condemned Israel for “a violation of humanitarian lawâ€� as he toured ruins in Beirut left by devastating Israeli air raids on residential areas.
“This is destruction of block after block of mainly residential areas. I would say it seems to be an excessive use of force in an area with so many citizens,� he told reporters.
Asked if this Israeli raid that destroyed the buildings was a war crime he replied: “It makes it a violation of humanitarian law�
Egeland, who arrived in Beirut earlier Sunday, was touring areas devastated by Israeli bombardment in the capital’s southern suburbs, visit schools for the displaced and meet Lebanese officials including Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.
On Monday, Egeland is due to launch an appeal for millions of dollars in humanitarian aid after relentless Israeli bombardment destroyed much of Lebanon’s infrastructure and forced more than half a million civilians to flee their homes.
The United Nations has warned that Lebanon was caught in a �catastrophic� humanitarian situation, with 500,000 people displaced by the Israeli attacks.
[…] One of Israel’s main justifications behind its aggressive bombing of civilian targets in Lebanon has been the claim that Hizbollah is “hiding among civilians.” The Israelis’ lies, as noted before, resembles the the US army’s rubbish about “VC communitiesâ€� during the Vietnam War–rubbish that was used to justify saturating entire communities with Agent Orange and bombing their villages back to the stone age. Kay sent me this article from Salon.com debunking this Israeli myth The “hiding among civilians” myth Israel claims it’s justified in bombing civilians because Hezbollah mingles with them. In fact, the militant group doesn’t trust its civilians and stays as far away from them as possible. By Mitch Prothero […]
Israel was granted an area by UN Madate in 1948 but if you compare its 2006 borders with its 1948 borders you will see quite clearly that Israel has expanded enormously–several times over in fact.
The West Bank, the Golan Heights, the Shebaa farms, east Jerusalem, all stolen lands, even if we ignore the recent invasions of Gaza and Lebanon.
At the very least israel must retire to its 1948 borders.