According to the New York Times, cluster bombs dropped by Israeli
warplanes have killed 18 persons and severely wounded 109 since the
conflagration between Israel and Hezbollah ended in August. The United
Nations Mine Action Coordinating Center recorded 745 locations littered
with an estimated one million unexploded bomblets across southern Lebanon,
home to 650,000 residents.
The bomblets, no larger than D batteries, come packed in bombs, missile
warheads, or artillery shells. When detonating, they spread like buckshot
over a large area. U.N. officials on the scene estimate that 40 percent
of the bomblets remain as unexploded hazards widely scattered across
the landscape. Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights
Watch warned: “Cluster ammunitions are unacceptably inaccurate
and unreliable weapons when used around civilians, … and should
never be used in populated areas.”
Israeli Prime Minister Olmert ordered the cluster bomb attacks in the
final days of the war, apparently hoping to kill a few more Hezbollah
militia members and punish all Lebanese for not turning against them.
During their 15 years of occupation of Lebanon prior to the most recent
conflict, Israeli troops had left a large amount of land mines and
unexploded ordnance throughout the southern half of the country. When
I was in the area five years ago, officials warned visitors to avoid
walking off the beaten path into potentially mine-infested territory.
In spite of worldwide criticism of the use of cluster bombs and the disproportionately
heavy and indiscriminate destruction wrought by the Israeli air force upon Lebanon,
President Bush defended both actions as necessary for Israel’s defense
against Hezbollah. “Sometimes it requires tragic situations,” he
explained, “to help bring clarity in the international community.”
Yet, many Israelis condemned their government’s reckless conduct of the
war. An army commander told Haaretz (an Israeli daily): “What we did was
insane and monstrous; we covered entire towns in cluster bombs.”
Regrettably, most of Israel’s cluster bombs originated in the United States.
A secret agreement, however, placed limitations on their use. After Israel’s
invasion of Lebanon in 1982, a congressional inquiry found that cluster bombs
had been intentionally dropped over civilian areas. The Reagan administration
therefore imposed a six-year ban upon further sale of cluster bombs to Israel.
Now the State Department is investigating if agreements were again violated.
A 1977 addition to the Geneva Convention prohibits attacks “which employ
a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective.” Human
Rights Watch concluded: “By consistently failing to distinguish between
combatants and civilians, Israel has violated one of the most fundamental laws
of war: the duty to carry out attacks on only military targets.”
While Israel’s present rulers insist that only overwhelming force will
destroy Palestinian and Lebanese resistance against their occupation and domination
policies, the use of cluster bombs and laser-guided missiles has grievously aggravated
Arab despair and hostility against Israel. Time and again in the past, terrorist
acts by either side resolved nothing and only resulted in more terrorist reactions.
Both Olmert and Bush have yet to understand the futility of their dependence
on overwhelming military force against millions of Arabs that have no comparable
power and therefore can retaliate only with remote-controlled and suicide bombs.
What is to be done? To avoid being blamed for the misuse of cluster bombs and
land mines by other governments, the United States should prohibit all exports
of such weapons. More importantly yet, the governments of both Israel and the
United States must at long last be persuaded that the problems of the Middle
East cannot be solved by military force, no matter how brutal or massive.
In a recent book, entitled Defending the Holy Land, the former head of the Jaffe
Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, Zeev Moaz, asked Israelis
to embark upon a radical change in their foreign policy: stop blaming all problems
on their Arab neighbors, take military action only if all diplomatic options
are exhausted, and develop a proactive policy promoting peace rather than perpetual
revenge and domination.