07 Sep Human Rights Watch Reports on “Israeli Indiscriminate Attacks”
Last week I linked to a report from Human Rights Watch on Hezbollah’s targeting of civilians. Yesterday Human Rights Watch released another report on the conflict, this one focusing on Israeli attacks on civilians in Lebanon. The press release is here and the full report is here. Here is a taste:
Israel’s indiscriminate airstrikes, not Hezbollah’s shielding as claimed by Israeli officials, caused most of the approximately 900 civilian deaths in Lebanon during the July-August 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch investigated more than 500 of the deaths. “Israel wrongfully acted as if all civilians had heeded its warnings to evacuate southern Lebanon when it knew they had not, disregarding its continuing legal duty to distinguish between military targets and civilians,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “Issuing warnings doesn’t make indiscriminate attacks lawful.”
Roger,
Thanks for posting this.
Important part on the Hezbollah’s combatants in civilian clothes: “On the few occasions that Human Rights Watch researchers encountered Hezbollah fighters in the field during the conflict, those Hezbollah fighters were invariably dressed in civilian clothes, and often had no visible weaponry on them. Especially away from the frontlines, Hezbollah fighters appear to have operated in small cells of fighters, dressed in civilian clothes and maintaining contact with each other as well as Hezbollah fighters in other cells with handheld radios.151 Away from active areas of combat, Hezbollah fighters were normally unarmed, keeping their weapons out of sight until needed. Only during active confrontations with Israeli forces did some Hezbollah fighters, particularly Hezbollah’s elite fighters, fight in military uniforms.152 While the humanitarian law applicable during the Israeli conflict with Hezbollah placed no obligation on those participating in the hostilities to wear uniforms,153 the routine appearance of Hezbollah fighters in civilian clothes and their failure to carry their weapons openly put the civilian population of Lebanon at risk. Since Hezbollah fighters regularly appeared in civilian clothes, Israeli forces would have had difficulty distinguishing between fighters and other male, fighting-age civilians, and such difficulty increased the dangers of IDF operations to the… Read more »
It’s the HRW. They ever get around to admitting they were wrong about the shelling on the beach incident?