Cluster Bombs
Updated 2024-02-26
2009=8-02-16 Flooding South Lebanon- Israel’s Use of Cluster Munitions in Lebanon in July and August 2006 Human Rights Watch’s researchers were on the ground in Lebanon throughout the conflict and after, and our findings paint a quite different picture of the IDF’s conduct. Research in more than 40 towns and villages found that the IDF’s use of cluster munitions was both indiscriminate and disproportionate, in violation of IHL, and in some locations possibly a war crime. In dozens of towns and villages, Israel used cluster munitions containing submunitions with known high failure rates. These left behind homes, gardens, fields, and public spaces-including a hospital-littered with hundreds of thousands and possibly up to one million unexploded submunitions.[2] By their nature, these dangerous, volatile submunitions cannot distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, foreseeably endangering civilians for months or years to come.
Cluster munitions are large, ground-launched or air-dropped weapons that, depending on their type, contain dozens or hundreds of submunitions. During strikes they endanger civilians because they blanket a broad area, and when they are used in or near populated areas, civilian casualties are virtually guaranteed. They also threaten civilians after conflict because they leave high numbers of hazardous submunitions that have failed to explode on impact as designed-known as duds-which can easily be set off by unwitting persons. As yet these weapons are not explicitly banned. However, their use is strictly limited by existing international humanitarian law on indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks. Moreover, global concern at the impact of cluster munitions, all too graphically manifested in south Lebanon, is lending impetus to international efforts to develop a legally binding instrument banning those that have an unacceptable humanitarian effect.
Israel continues to have a duty to investigate publicly, independently, impartially, and rigorously these extensive violations of international humanitarian law. Investigation should include a thorough examination of whether individual commanders bear responsibility for war crimes-that is, for intentionally or recklessly authorizing or conducting attacks that would indiscriminately or disproportionally harm civilians. The continuing failure of the Government of Israel to mount a credible investigation one and a half years after the end of the 2006 conflict in Lebanon-and failure on the Lebanese side of the border to investigate Hezbollah’s compliance with international humanitarian law-reaffirms the need for the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) to establish an International Commission of Inquiry to investigate reports of violations of international humanitarian law, including possible war crimes, committed by both sides during the conflict. https://www.hrw.org/report/2008/02/16/flooding-south-lebanon/israels-use-cluster-munitions-lebanon-july-and-august-2006
.
Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict
.
progressiveissuesblog 