Lebanon (also see Hezbollah)
Updated 2024-08-27
2024-07-30 Israel Bombs Beirut in Escalation of Attacks Israel launched a strike on Beirut, Lebanon’s capital city, on Tuesday, killing one and wounding dozens of others in an escalation of Israel’s months of attacks on Hezbollah forces and civilian areas of Lebanon that have pushed the conflict to the brink of war.
Several sources reported that the attack, which Israel took responsibility for, was carried out by a drone in a populous area of a southern suburb of Beirut. Al Jazeera reported that the attack was carried out on an apartment in the zone where Hezbollah is known to operate.
The Lebanon health ministry reports the attack killed one woman and wounded 68 others. Initial reports have found that Israel’s target, a Hezbollah commander, survived the strike. https://truthout.org/articles/israel-bombs-beirut-in-escalation-of-attacks/
2024-07-01 Palestine Post: Addressing the Lebanese Border & Report from the West Bank On this week’s Palestine Post, we speak with Rami Khouri, a Distinguished Public Policy Fellow at the American University of Beirut, and a journalist and author with 50 years of experience covering the Middle East; we also speak with Brendan Maslauskas-Dunn, an independent reporter who recently returned to the US from the West Bank. https://kpfa.org/episode/law-disorder-july-1-2024/
2022-09-16 Sabra and Shatila massacre: What happened in Lebanon in 1982? Israeli-backed Phalange militia killed between 2,000 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees and Lebanese civilians in two days. Shatila, a Palestinian refugee camp, and the adjacent neighborhood of Sabra are located southwest of Lebanon’s capital city Beirut. The refugees were victims of the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic, fleeing the violent ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist militias as Israel was formed.
In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon during the country’s 15-year civil war (1975-1990), with the stated aim of destroying the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had been based in Beirut and was launching attacks on Israel from southern Lebanon.
The PLO withdrew from Lebanon by September 1, 1982. Assurances were provided by the United States and a multi-national force that the remaining Palestinian refugees and civilians would be protected.
Two weeks later, the Israeli military besieged Sabra and Shatila and provided cover for their allies, a right-wing Lebanese militia called the Phalange, to carry out the mass killings. But between September 16 and 18, 1982, the refugees, now living in Shatila and Sabra, along with Lebanese civilians, were attacked by a right-wing Lebanese militia, in coordination with the Israeli army. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/16/sabra-and-shatila-massacre-40-years-on-explainer
2009-08-02-16 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
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