Amnesty Report- Israel/Lebanon

Deliberate destruction or "collateral damage"? Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure
"The civilian population in Lebanon and in northern Israel have been the biggest losers in this senseless cycle of violence that is now exactly one month old...Civilians were supposed to be spared and in this conflict they are not."


Jan Egeland, UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, 10 August 2006


LIBRARY MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA MIDDLE EAST LEBANON
AI Index: MDE 18/007/2006 23 August 2006


Israel/Lebanon
Deliberate destruction or "collateral damage"? Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure
"The civilian population in Lebanon and in northern Israel have been the biggest losers in this senseless cycle of violence that is now exactly one month old...Civilians were supposed to be spared and in this conflict they are not."


Jan Egeland, UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, 10 August 2006


In a country of fewer than four million inhabitants, more than 25 per cent of them took to the roads as displaced persons. An estimated 500,000 people sought shelter in Beirut alone, many of them in parks and public spaces, without water or washing facilities.

Amnesty International delegates in south Lebanon reported that in village after village the pattern was similar: the streets, especially main streets, were scarred with artillery craters along their length. In some cases cluster bomb impacts were identified. Houses were singled out for precision-guided missile attack and were destroyed, totally or partially, as a result. Business premises such as supermarkets or food stores and auto service stations and petrol stations were targeted, often with precision-guided munitions and artillery that started fires and destroyed their contents. 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.

Israeli government spokespeople have insisted that they were targeting Hizbullah positions and support facilities, and that damage to civilian infrastructure was incidental or resulted from Hizbullah using the civilian population as a "human shield". However, the pattern and scope of the attacks, as well as the number of civilian casualties and the amount of damage sustained, makes the justification ring hollow. The evidence strongly suggests that the extensive destruction of public works, power systems, civilian homes and industry was deliberate and an integral part of the military strategy, rather than "collateral damage" – incidental damage to civilians or civilian property resulting from targeting military objectives.

Statements by Israeli military officials seem to confirm that the destruction of the infrastructure was indeed a goal of the military campaign. On 13 July, shortly after the air strikes began, the Israel Defence Force (IDF) Chief of Staff Lt-Gen Dan Halutz noted that all Beirut could be included among the targets if Hizbullah rockets continued to hit northern Israel: "Nothing is safe [in Lebanon], as simple as that,"(8) he said. Three days later, according to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, a high ranking IDF officer threatened that Israel would destroy Lebanese power plants if Hizbullah fired long-range missiles at strategic installations in northern Israel.(9) On 24 July, at a briefing by a high-ranking Israeli Air Force officer, reporters were told that the IDF Chief of Staff had ordered the military to destroy 10 buildings in Beirut for every Katyusha rocket strike on Haifa.(10) His comments were later condemned by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.(11) According to the New York Times, the IDF Chief of Staff said the air strikes were aimed at keeping pressure on Lebanese officials, and delivering a message to the Lebanese government that they must take responsibility for Hizbullah’s actions. He called Hizbullah "a cancer" that Lebanon must get rid of, "because if they don’t their country will pay a very high price." (12)

The widespread destruction of apartments, houses, electricity and water services, roads, bridges, factories and ports, in addition to several statements by Israeli officials, suggests a policy of punishing both the Lebanese government and the civilian population in an effort to get them to turn against Hizbullah. Israeli attacks did not diminish, nor did their pattern appear to change, even when it became clear that the victims of the bombardment were predominantly civilians, which was the case from the first days of the conflict.


International humanitarian law and war crimes

International humanitarian law governs the conduct of war, and seeks to protect civilians, others not participating in the hostilities, and civilian objects. In an armed conflict, military forces must distinguish between civilian objects, which may not be attacked, and military objectives, which, subject to certain conditions, may be. The principle of distinction is a cornerstone of the laws of war.

Military objectives are those that: "by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage." Civilian objects are "all objects which are not military objectives". Objects which are normally considered "civilian objects" may, under certain circumstances, become legitimate military objectives if they are "being used to make an effective contribution to military action". However, in case of doubt about such use, the object must be presumed to be civilian.

Direct attacks against civilian objects are prohibited, as are indiscriminate attacks. Indiscriminate attacks are those which strike military objectives and civilian objects without distinction. One form of indiscriminate attack is treating clearly separate and distinct military objects located in a city, town, village or concentration of civilians, as a single military objective. If two buildings in a residential area are identified as containing fighters, bombardment of the entire area would be unlawful.

Disproportionate attacks, also prohibited, are those in which the "collateral damage" would be regarded as excessive in relation to the direct military advantage to be gained. Israel maintains that the military advantage in this context "is not of that specific attack but of the military operation as a whole".(13)

This interpretation is too wide. Overbroad interpretations of what constitutes a military objective or military advantage are often used to justify attacks aimed at harming the economy of a state or demoralizing the civilian population. Such interpretations undermine civilian immunity. A legitimate military advantage cannot be one that is merely "a potential or indeterminate advantage". If weakening the enemy population’s resolve to fight were considered a legitimate objective of armed forces, there would be no limit to war.

Israel has launched widespread attacks against public civilian infrastructure, including power plants, bridges, main roads, seaports and Beirut’s international airport. Such objects are presumed to be civilian. Israeli officials told Amnesty International that the potential military use of certain items, such as electricity and fuel, renders them legitimate military targets. However, even if it could be argued that some of these objects could qualify as military objectives (because they serve a dual purpose), Israel is obligated to ensure that attacking these objects would not violate the principle of proportionality. For example, a road that can be used for military transport is still primarily civilian in nature. The military advantage anticipated from destroying the road must be measured against the likely effect on civilians, especially the most vulnerable, such as those requiring urgent medical attention. The same considerations apply to electricity and fuel, among other items.

Similarly critical is the obligation that Israel take "constant care to spare civilians, the civilian population, civilian objects, from attack". This requirement to take precautionary measures in launching attacks includes choosing only means and methods of attack "with a view to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects".

It is also forbidden to use starvation as a method of warfare, or to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population. Some of the targets chosen – water pumping stations and supermarkets, for example – raise the possibility that Israel may have violated the prohibition against targeting objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.

Israel has asserted that Hizbullah fighters have enmeshed themselves in the civilian population for the purpose of creating "human shields". While the use of civilians to shield a combatant from attack is a war crime, under international humanitarian law such use does not release the opposing party from its obligations towards the protection of the civilian population.

Many of the violations examined in this report are war crimes that give rise to individual criminal responsibility. They include directly attacking civilian objects and carrying out indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks. People against whom there is prima facie evidence of responsibility for the commission of these crimes are subject to criminal accountability anywhere in the world through the exercise of universal jurisdiction.


The damage to the infrastructure

The long-term impact of the destruction of Lebanon’s infrastructure on the lives of the country’s men, women and children is incalculable. Many have lost their homes while having to cope with the deaths of loved ones or struggling to overcome severe injuries. Many more have lost their livelihoods. Records showing home and property ownership have been destroyed, adding to the difficulties of rebuilding lives.

The head of the country’s Council for Development and Reconstruction, Fadl Shalak, said on 16 August that the damage incurred amounted to US $3.5 billion: US $2 billion for buildings and US $1.5 billion for infrastructure such as bridges, roads, and power plants.(14) A survey compiled by the Council, based on on-site inspections in central and northern Lebanon and telephone calls to engineers and municipal officials in the south, showed the worst damage to the road network, with more than 120 bridges destroyed (a significantly higher figure than that reported by the government). Fadl Shalak said that replacing the bridge connecting Mount Lebanon to the Bekaa Valley above the Sulfi River on the road to Damascus would cost an estimated US $65 million. "A beautiful bridge, its columns 70 meters, it’s one of a kind in the whole Middle East. Why would they destroy such a bridge?" he asked. "They could have bombed the beginning and the end and stopped the traffic. But they made a point to bomb this bridge several times."(15) Another observer said, "This bridge is not used by Hizbullah since it lies in a mountain resort area of Mount Lebanon, far away from the south of Lebanon. Hence it has no strategic value for the Israeli fight against Hizbullah. But it was a beautiful bridge and was the symbol of the reconstruction of Lebanon after the civil war."(16)

For the report : http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engmde180072006