Israel’s illegal cluster bombs

A vast reconstruction effort, spearheaded by Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance movement, is rebuilding some 300 villages and towns in Lebanon devastated by the Israeli bombing of 2006. Yet these mountainous regions have not yet restored much of the small family farming plots so crucial to the economy.

Why? Because many of these areas remain mined and dangerous.

In an attempt to permanently destroy southern Lebanon’s farming-based economy, Israel dropped more than a million cluster bombs there in the last 72 hours of the war, after the cease-fire had been negotiated.

By the time the fighting stopped, 26 percent of southern Lebanon’s cultivatable land was covered with unexploded bombs and 34 million square meters (13 square miles) were contaminated, according to the United Nations. The deadly bombs were everywhere—hanging from trees, in orange and banana fields—making it impossible to collect harvests or to plow the land for new planting.

“The scope was extensive and unprecedented in any modern use of these types of cluster weapons,” says Chris Clark, the program manager for the U.N. Mine Action Coordination Centre of South Lebanon. (Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 7, 2007)

This carpet-bombing of farms was collective punishment against the civilian population, a barbarity which was outlawed after the Nazi horrors of World War II. Israel’s use of cluster bombs against civilians violates the 1949 Geneva Conventions, a body of international law defining the protection of civilians, detainees, the wounded and humanitarian workers in wars.

Clearly, the dropping of these bombs was a war crime. Yet there has been no international outcry of “war criminal” or “state terrorism” against Israel or against the U.S. government, which supplied the bombs and surely gave Israel the green light to use them.

Since then, Israel has made every effort to obstruct the cleanup. Since the 2006 cease-fire, the U.N. has asked Tel Aviv to provide maps of where the bombs were dropped so they could be cleared. Israel finally provided the maps in May—three years later.

By that time, erosion, heavy rains, human construction and other factors had moved the bombs, driving many deeper into the soil and making them harder to remove. It is no wonder that Brig. Mohammed Fahmi, head of the Lebanese Demining Center, called the Israeli maps “useless.” He added, “What benefit can we get from such information after three years, and after witnessing 50 deaths and 350 injuries?” (Beirut Daily Star, Aug. 19).

Many of the victims of unexploded cluster bombs are children under the age of 12. And the casualties continue. On Aug. 19, ironically the 60th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, a cluster bomb wounded two boys as they gathered firewood in the village of Toulin. A few days later, a bomb killed a Syrian man and wounded two others in the village of Yanta.

If that were not enough, in May, many of the internationally based companies clearing mines announced they were running out of funds and would drastically cut back their efforts. With no replacement of funds, some predicted that clearing the mostly agricultural area of unexploded bombs would take eight years or more. (IRIN, May 14)

According to the Lebanese National Demining Office, 1,080 locations were contaminated with cluster bombs and only 562 of them have been cleared. Some 16 million square meters of land are still contaminated, of which 12 million are due for clearing.

Who is rising to the occasion to help Lebanon’s working people? Certainly not the U.S., which has ignored the suffering in south Lebanon. Once again, it is the resistance movement and its allies that have stepped forward—the very forces Washington calls “terrorist.”

On Aug. 14, the launch of a new mine-clearing nongovernmental organization was announced—the Peace Generation Organization for Demining, which is funded by an Iranian foundation. Iran is an ally and supporter of Hezbollah.

In the southern town of Nabatieh, this group signed an agreement with Lebanon’s National Demining Office to clear infested spots with the help of the Iranian company Ayman Sazan. Only days later, it was working in two fields in the towns of Zawtar al-Sharqiya and Qabrikha. (Daily Star, Aug. 19)

After the war, it was the resistance which sought to insure the safety of the people in the mined areas. Hezbollah went to the bombed areas first, determined where the bombs were, and then guided the people to return safely to the South. Hezbollah has conducted its own efforts to clear Lebanese soil of Israeli cluster bombs and mines, though it maintains that the main responsibility for the clearing belongs to the Lebanese army.