When the very first atom bomb was detonated, in Alamagordo, New Mexico, J. Robert Oppenheimer's famously cited from the Bhagavad Gita: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
Last week, Stephan Vanpeteghem was killed. Vanpeteghem, age 35 and the married father of two, was part of the Belgian contingent serving as part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) clearing unexploded ordinance in South Lebanon. The destroyer of worlds that led to his death was part of the residue of cluster bombs Israel employed principally in the last three days of its war in Lebanon two years ago.
I first (and belatedly) became aware of cluster bombs during the NATO air attack against the Serbs during the war in Kosovo in 1999. Here is a brief excerpt of what I wrote at the time:
"NATO (the American and British components thereof) dropped 1500 cluster bombs during the course of the air war against Serbia. Each bomb, in turn, released between 150 and 200 'bomblets,' small bright yellow canisters that float down to the ground on individual parachutes and there detonate, except when they don't. The ones that do detonate presumably destroy that which they are intended to destroy - tanks, soldiers, whatnot. But one knows in advance that some ten percent will malfunction, will not detonate when they land. In the Kosovo case, it seems that the ten percent figure was rather dramatically increased because the 'bomblets,' it turns out, were dated. [Like the prescription drugs in your medicine cabinet, they are good only until the date specified. After that, who knows?] The current estimate is that the failure rate in Kosovo may have run as high as 30 percent. The arithmetic is simple. Even at the 10 percent failure rate, we're talking about more than 25,000 bomblets strewn about the countryside. At the higher end, there may be as many as 90,000. And yes, they will explode; their failure on initial impact does not inhibit them from blowing up months or years later in a child's hand, or a sapper's. The results, when that happens? In one recent incident, two soldiers were killed as they sought to move cluster bombs; the explosion was so powerful that not enough was left of their bodies to recover."
By the time of Kosovo, the Landmine Treaty - prohibiting the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of anti-personnel land mines - had been in force for two years. By now, more than 10 years later, 156 nations have signed the treaty. (Among those that have not signed are Israel and the United States - along with 37 others.) Among the problems that treaty did not address was the fate of the cluster munitions, which behave, if unexploded, very much like mines. But finally, just this last May 30, in Dublin, 107 nations agreed to a Convention on Cluster Munitions, banning most. ("Smart" cluster munitions, where each submunition contains its own targeting and guidance system as well as an auto-self-destruct mechanism, are permitted.) The convention is scheduled to be ratified this coming December and to be operative six months later. (Among others, Israel and the United States, as well as Russia and China, India and Pakistan have not signed.)
The specific impetus for the Dublin agreement was Israel's massive use of cluster bombs during its war in Lebanon in 2006.
Here words fail me; I am at a loss. For though I was distressed back in 1999 by the prospect of as many as 90,000 unexploded bomblets strewn over the Kosovar countryside, estimates of the number of cluster sub-munitions (the formal name for "bomblets") used by Israel during the Lebanon War of 2006 run at about 4 million, of which, according to the U.N., some 40 percent - 1,600,000 - failed to detonate on initial impact. (The shells now carry as many as 400 bomblets each, and are dispersed over an area of some 250 square yards.) Since the end of the war, more than 320 people have been killed or injured, mostly because of cluster munitions. Until the clearance is complete, the region's inhabitants, who live by olive and tobacco farming, will continue to have restricted access to their fields.
Shocking? Try this: Roughly 90 percent of the cluster munitions fired by Israel (mostly by artillery rather than from airplanes) were fired in the last 72 hours of the 2006 war, when the imminence of a cease fire was already apparent. Track back the logic: Either revenge, or a decision to render as much land of South Lebanon as possible uninhabitable.
Or try this: Israel produces cluster munitions, and the cluster munitions it produces are equipped with self-destruct mechanisms. They have a claimed failure rate of just one or two percent percent. But Israel chose not to use the munitions of its own manufacture, since it was less expensive to purchase such munitions from American stocks, using American aid money that Israel is required to spend in America.
There's more, much more, on Israel's use of cluster munitions. The issue has been covered extensively in the Israeli press, with eye-witness testimony from soldiers who fired the shells, statements by commanding generals, even specific mention in the Winograd Report, the official "last word" on the 2006 war. After the war, Israel appointed Brig.-Gen. Michel Ben- Baruch from the IDF's Ground Forces Command to probe the matter. He found that the use of cluster bombs during the war did not match the orders regulated by then- chief of staff Lt.-Gen. (res.) Dan Halutz. Halutz then appointed OC Military Colleges Maj.-Gen. Gershon Hacohen to investigate the matter. According to military sources, Hacohen questioned Northern Command's top brass and found that its former chief, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Udi Adam, was suspected of ordering the firing of cluster bombs into populated areas during the final days of the fighting. The IDF's final verdict on the matter was provided by Judge Advocate General Brig.-Gen. Avihai Mandelblit, who determined that "cluster bombs were fired in accordance with the military principle of distinction between combatants and civilians, and were used only when the commanding officer determined that the potential damage to civilians, as well as infrastructure, was not disproportionate to the military advantage to be gained from firing cluster bombs."
The Winograd Committee dug rather deeper. It charged that the army's rules for using cluster bombs were unclear and called on it to review them with the aim of reducing civilian casualties from bomblets that explode after the end of hostilities.
According to the committee, the rules did not address situations in which Lebanese villagers abandoned their homes during the fighting and the army fired cluster bombs at Hizbullah fighters who had taken up positions in the village and fired Katyushas at Israel. Moreover, "the facts regarding the use of cluster bombs demonstrated the faults in operational discipline, supervision and control and the lack of clarity of the commands and guidelines just as we had found in other aspects of the war. It is vital that the army learns the lessons that should be apparent from the use of cluster bombs during the war. There was an ongoing [lack of] clarity regarding the rules and a lack of operational discipline and of commands that caused incidents which deviated from the explicit guidelines regarding the use of this type of weaponry. This was neither noticed nor prevented [by the military command] during the lengthy war."
Cries of outrage and demands for further investigation were taken up not only by international human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, but also by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which reacted to Winograd by holding that "it is not enough that the committee recommended examining the constraints on the use of cluster bombs in order to change the rules." ACRI called for "criminal investigations against all those involved in the firing of cluster bombs in built-up areas which caused the deaths of innocent civilians."
The US State Department conducted its own investigation into the IDF's use of American-made cluster bombs and found that Israel had violated an agreement with Washington prohibiting the firing of the bombs on populated areas.
As a result, the US Senate approved an amendment put forward by Senators Patrick Leahy and Dianne Feinstein as part of its Foreign Aid legislation that will prevent Israel from purchasing cluster bombs with American military aid. The U.S. has also announced that it will henceforward export cluster bombs that have no more than a one percent failure rate.
After all the talk, official Israeli policy, frequently repeated by Mark Regev, the Government spokesman, is simple: ""Israel does not use any weaponry which is not authorized by international law or international conventions."
One more element of background, and then the question: Reuters reports on August 22 that according to Dalya Farran, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Mine Action Coordinating Center (UNMACC), "'Many of the 44 teams clearing cluster munitions scattered by Israel in south Lebanon during its 2006 war with Hezbollah will have to stop work this month for lack of funds. Donors have failed to come up with a promised $4.7 million needed to fund the program in 2008. A very large number of the clearance teams will be stopping by the end of this month if we don't get funds before that,' Farran said, adding that some donor countries had not kept their promises and others had lost interest two years after the war."
"'Since [the cease fire] 27 civilians have been killed and 234 wounded by unexploded ordnance, mostly cluster munitions, while 13 bomb disposal experts have been killed and 39 wounded,' Farran said; 'Any reduction in clearance work would lead to a higher accident rate because past experience shows that villagers will attempt to deal with the bomblets themselves if they believe that no disposal teams will do the job.'"
"UNMACC has identified 1,058 cluster strike locations across the south. The United Nations says Israel has not responded to repeated requests for detailed data on the strikes."
The question: Why should not the bill for the $4.7 million needed to fund the clearing program for the balance of this year be sent directly to the Government of Israel? Why should Israel's friends and supporters not encourage Israel to step up and pay to clean up a mess it knowingly made, no matter the justification it offered at the time?
And if, for whatever sorry reason, the Israeli government disclaims responsibility, why should not Israel's supporters - nay, lovers - in this country divert $4.7 million from their contributions to Israeli instiutions and send a check to the UNMACC?
How else become life, the restorer of worlds?
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Thank you! I will send a check to UNMACC and hope the Israeli government and others do the same.
Annie Levine
Why not indeed? In fact, why not withhold American foreign altogether while Israel refuses to provide data that allows the sites of cluster bomb firing to be mapped? I do not think it is feasible that Israel fired the bombs in the last hours of the war for "vengence." They were fired to create a cordon sanitaire in Southern Lebanon at the expense of Lebanese civilians, and that is a war crime. Why should we provide foreign aid until that is rectified?
Leonard,
As was recently pointed out explicitly in a recent PBS special by British historian Niall Ferguson, for those not bright enough to have realized this previously, WWII was won by the Allies by using the same general tactics as the Axis powers, arguing that their previous employment by them justified the Allies using them in turn.
Lebanon has been used by terrorists since 1969 in an attempt to deny Israel the use of its northern territory. First it was the PLO (Fatah, PFLP, Al Saiqa, etc.) and then since 1982-83 Hezbollah. The Arabs consider the Arab-Israeli conflict to be a "long war" in the terminology of the IRA. Israel, like Britain, the USSR, and the U.S. in WWII, considers itself to be involved in a war of survival. Israel probably was engaged in a territory-denial strategy like that of its Arab opponents. Why should Israel spend money to clean up the mess when this will promptly permit the Hezbollah to use it to shell northern Israel? Cleanup occurs once a conflict is over. This is what happened in Cambodia and Angola with the mines. The Second Lebanon War may have ended two years ago but the conflict continues. Any money spent on cleanup will be wasted.
Tom:
You raise an interesting point. However:
1. Whether the terrorists sought to deny Israel the use of Israel's northern territory or to deny Israel the use of Lebanon's southern territory is at the least an open question.
2. I wonder how your reasoning mollifies the farmers of South Lebanon whose fields and orchards have been rendered inaccessible.
3. The clean-up is, in fact, going forward, as evidenced by the continuing casualties suffered by the sappers.
4. I know of no evidence to support the notion that Hezbollah is inhibited from shelling by the presence of bomblets. Rather, at least for the time being, it sees nothing to be gained -- and very much to be risked -- by nuisance tactics. Its game has become steadily more strategic.
Leonard,
Re point #1: The PLO in accord with the Melkart and Cairo agreements was operating out of "Fatahland" as the beginning of the process of the "liberation of Palestine" in the early 1970s. Hezbollah carried out its kidnapping in 2006 that sparked the war ostensibly because Israel still occupies Sheba Farms, although the UN said that Israel no longer occupies any Lebanese territory. It is much more likely that Sheba Farm is merely a rationale for Hezbollah not to disarm and to allow it to continue to attack Israel.
Re #2: It might well be that Israel's strategy is counterproductive, particularly in the case of a country like Lebanon that lacks a well-functioning and powerful central government. But until Israel decides that this is the case it will continue to pursue the strategy.
#3: There was major fighting occuring on an off-and-on basis for a decade before Operation Peace for Galilee in June 1982. Fighting also continued after that war for years. Unless Israel decides not to use cluster bombs in the future, the cleanup is likely to be an expensive temporary fix.
#4 Hezbollah has probably been tactically ahead of the IDF for at least a decade. The IDF is much more formidable against the Palestinians than against Hezbollah. There has been a marked deterioration of the military performance of the IDF since at least 1982 if not since 1973, possibly because of a lack of credible conventional opponents and the low skill level of Palestinian resistance.
Leonard shows us with all painful clarity what are the results of merciless military actions unsupported by serious political strategy. I hope enough money would be collected to enable safe life in southern Lebanon. The most important task now would be, however, to preserve life on both sides of the Lebanese border.
I think the problem is Israel's policy (or: "policy"). It is run mainly by our army, by deed and by word, because there is no personnel and concept to run policy by statesmanship and decency considerations. One of the decisive concepts of our army's behavior is its mechanical pursuit of domination, without any real care for human life. It could be demonstrated in the following example (as if made especially for dear Joel): after learning about the failures of food-supply to the fighting soldiers in the 2006 war, some in our command decided to conduct a hunger-training, demanding from soldiers not to eat at all. After a week of such a training, a young officer Ariel Benyami died. He left a diary, where his slow death had been recorded (please look into Maariv September 9, 2008, "Le-Yediat vaadat khakira ha-baah"). What are the consequences? The army "investigates" the matter.
By the way, another slow investigation has started the day before yesterday. It touches the days of October-November 2000, when the then Chief-of-Staff Shaul Mofaz required producing a daily quota of Palestinian deaths (I still can not bring myself to mention the number Mr. Mofaz had allegedly required. However, I vividly remember this story from that very autumn of 2000, because it was not a secret in those days). And Mr. Mofaz is, as you say, “a heartbeat” from Israeli premier-ministership (I am not sure the abovementioned facts would damage his political standing; the only problem is his legal standing, but with some effort this could be successfully overcome).
Zecharia, Since Leonard has changed the subject, I will respond to your last request privately as soon as I can. By the way, it has occurred to me that the way to reach the religious settlers may be through Halachah. So I am reading about Jewish law on private property. If this can be a fruitful pursuit, it would be very useful if some Halachic scholars were to take up this investigation.
Leonard, I agree with Tom. The reason that land-mines and cluster bombs are frowned upon is the danger to innocent civilians after the end of hostilities. In the instant case, by the election of Hezbollah hostilities have not ended. I am not aware that the Lebanese claim that Hezbollah are their dictatorial oppressors. Therefore, just as in the case of the majority of Israelis and the oppression of the territorial Palestinians, these hostilities are being continued with the acquiescence of the not-so-innocent Lebanese civilians. The present value of the cluster bombs to the Israelis is that their presence impedes the movement of Hezbollah assets in Southern Lebanon.