Collective punishment again
ON July 31 at 6PM, a ceasefire went into effect in Lebanon. Through the good offices of American Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Israel pledged to stop bombing points to the north of the "security zone" - in exchange for which Syria promised to use its influence to get Hezbollah to commit itself to stop bombing Israeli territory.
International Viewpoint #248 September 1993
In 1970, General Dayan gave the order to totally destroy the towns of the Suez and Ismaelia to end the war of attrition that the Egyptian army was waging over the Suez Canal. There were more than 70,000 refugees. As for Rabin, during the war in Lebanon he advised Ariel Sharon to starve out
TIKVA HONIG-PARNASS & MICHEL WARSCHAWSKI — Jerusalem, August 24, 1993
THE rules of the game have been re-established", declared an Israeli spokesperson, adding, "we cannot tolerate that inhabitants in the north of the country are the hostages of Hezbollah." This is a flagrant untruth: the inhabitants of Galilee were bombed by the Hezbollah in response to the bombing by the Israeli airforce and artillery of Lebanese areas north of the "security zone"
Much ado about nothing? It would be nice to think so, were it not for the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese victims - killed, mutilated or forced to flee their villages, with thousands of houses destroyed. Indeed, contrary to the declarations of the spokesperson of the Israeli army, who said that only about 100 houses had been destroyed, the aggression ravaged the south of Lebanon.
The Israeli artillery has bragged about firing 70,000 shells, and the commander of the airforce has spoken about more than 1,200 attacks. So if only 100 houses were destroyed, the Israeli High Command should bring its superior officers up on Court Martial for having wasted so much ammunition!
The daily Haaretz is closer to reality when it says, Israeli attacks reduced the city of Nabatiye to ruins, where only a few houses remained intact, as well as 70% of the villages of Jibshit, Majdal, Solom and Jeb'a".! As far as the 300,000 refugees are concerned, Prime Minister Rabin himself recognises the facts without for all that pleading guilty for war crimes.
But how else can the operation "settling of scores" be described when the prime minister himself explains before the Defense Committee of the Knesset, "Our goal is to transfer the inhabitants of south Lebanon to the region of Beirut, and to make 200,000 people refugees. To be sure, this is not for any old inhabitant or villager, but for those who come from 'stubborn' regions which 10 support the Hezbollah."2
And the military commentator of the daily Hadashot can assert, without any risk of being in error, that, "The third phase (the massive expulsion from the southern villages) was clearly inscribed in the operational plan where it is explicitly stated that the expulsion of the local population is at the heart of phase 3. This is neither my estimation nor a dishonest shift of the original objectives. It was the stated goal."3
Settling scores with the Shi'ite population of southern Lebanon, and using it to pressure the Lebanese government - this all corresponds exactly to what The Hague Convention and Nuremberg trial define as war crimes. Hadashot journalist Reli Tadmor writes, "This government is guilty of war crimes on the basis of its own admissions. We have nothing to prove."
The objective of operation "Settling scores" strangely recall that of the Gulf War: a massive use of firepower to terrorise civilian populations and punish them for supporting or tolerating those who the aggressors consider to be their enemies, thereby forcing civilians to reject them.
A continuous war crime
But this method dates back to a time well before the Gulf War. The reserve general Avigdor Kahalani, Labour Party deputy and mayoral candidate in Tel Aviv, recalls that already in 1968-69 the Israeli artillery "transformed the east bank of the Jordan River valley into a desert, to convince the Jordanian government that it should take measures [against Palestinian commandos]."
He adds, "I suggest that you not underestimate the trauma through which the populations of the south will go once they have returned to their communities. Some will find they no longer have a house; others that they no longer have a road - these memories will remain very powerful."
the civilian population of Beirut until they obliged the PLO to leave the city.
So we are not only dealing with a government of war criminals, but with a terrorist state and an army whose entire history is that of one continuous war crime.
In Israel, there has been no real opposition to these war crimes. Of course, some voices of protest were heard in the government and the Knesset but they were neither persistent nor unequivocal.
This past week, three blocs have been perceivable within the coalition: Rabin's supporters, who are the majority; the three Labour party ministers who abstained (Labour and Welfare Minister Ora Namir, Justice Minister David Liba'i, and Tourism Minister Uzi Bar'am); and the four Meretz ministers, led by Yossi Sarid, who on Sunday expressed their opposition to the government's approval of the Security Cabinet's decision from its session on the previous Friday — at which Meretz members, Absorption minister Ya'r Tsaban and Shulamit Aloni, had abstained - and Shas party minister Aryeh Der'i.
The press has been full of commentators' doubts regarding the "effectiveness" and "wisdom" of the operation, and of its chances of success, and a few of them even have raised questions as to the morality of destroying entire villages and expelling hundreds of thousands of their inhabitants. And of course the parties with whose help the ruling coalition is able to maintain its "blocking majority" — Hadash and the Arab parties - came out in unequivocal opposition to the military operation, as did Gush Shalom, a new radical section of the Israeli peace movement. But in general, the Israeli people have supported the operation: a weekend survey showed that 93% of the public support the way in which the operation was conducted in Lebanon.4
However, Hadash has not announced the withdrawal of its support for the govern-
1. Ha'aretz, July 30, 1993.
2. Zeev Schiff, Ha'aretz, July 28, 1993.
3. Alex Fishman, Hadashot, July 30, 1993
4. Ha'aretz, August 3, 1993.
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• LEBANON
International Viewpoint #248 September 1993 ment in the wake of its crimes. Opposition from Meretz has been even more limited. both in the content and the forcefulness of its reactions. The majority of the Meretz caucus was critical of the expulsion of citizens and the bombing of Lebanese villages, but they too believe that it is necessary to "hit Hezbollah", ignoring the significance of the fact that it is a movement of resistance to Israeli
But the Meretz members did little or nothing — besides their opposition ote and laconic responses to journalists' - to make their views public or to attempt to mobilise public opinion against the war. And of course their formal opposition within the governing coalition was not accompanied by a forceful expression of their stand. for fear of endangering their membership in
In criticism of this approach from the ranks of Meretz activists, and in response to their growing demand - which reached its peak on the fourth day of the war - that their representatives either leave the coalition in protest or submit an ultimatum that they would leave if the bombing of the civilian population was not halted, the Meretz cabinet members said that they were exercising influence on the government positions "from within".
One week after the signing of the ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah, nine soldiers had already fallen in ambushes in south Lebanon. One can understand the critical attitude of the Israeli public which, after having overwhelmingly supported the aggression, is beginning to understand that the week-long storm of fire and steel over Lebanon has changed nothing for Israel and its army.
Government propaganda is now trying to present the "settling of scores" operation as one that was destined to put an end to the rocket attacks on Galilee. But, as all the experts have recognised, these rocket attacks were nothing more than a response to a new stage of Israeli aggression in Lebanon -that is, the systematic bombing of Lebanese territory to the north of the Israeli-occupied zone, carried out as a way to pressure Lebanese and Palestinian commandos whose activities in the Israeli-controlled zone are increasingly effective.
### Hezbollah ingenuity
As the foremost Israeli military expert, Zeev Schiff, has noted, "Three months ago, one of my articles provoked some controversy in the army, because I asserted that Hezbollah had significantly improved from a military standpoint, displaying remarkable courage and ingenuity. And this evaluation has become even more accurate; while in
1990 the ratio of fallen Israeli soldiers to fallen Hezbollah combattants was 1:5.2, since 1992 it has decline to 1:1.7."5
For the Lebanese resistance, and particularly for members of Hezbollah, the war of liberation waged against the South Lebanese Army (SLA) and Tsahal in the "security zone" was limited to this territory, and it is Israel that, confronted with the effectiveness of the guerrilla, made the decision to strike at the civilian population outside the security zone. In response, Hezbollah declared, "If the Lebanese population to the north of the security zone is no longer safe, then the Israeli population to the south of this zone will no longer be so either."
The ceasefire agreement secured a promise from Israel to stop bombing to the north of the "security zone" — exactly what had been requested by Hezbollah, which no longer has any reason to bomb Naharya and Kiryat Shmone.
On the other hand, the guerrilla war continues in south Lebanon, with the same effectiveness discusses by Schiff, who adds, "The military situation [in south Lebanon] is not good. If Hezbollah can lay down so many mines and other explosives, this means that Hezbollah commandos can penetrate into the security zone as they like with hundreds of kilograms of explosives, set them up and then retreat back into the north. If we also consider the fact that often they can carry out daytime attacks lasting several hours on SLA bases, this means that we have a military problem."
The nine soldiers who have fallen since the signing of the ceasefire agreement are a real problem for the Rabin government. Public opinion does not like to see soldiers dying at the front, and the right is accusing the government and High Command of softness.
But the government and army have committed themselves to not react to the north of the security zone, under the pressure of inhabitants of northern Israel who are not ready to go back into the shelters or to withstand the rocket attacks. And nobody wants to see the conflict enlarge into one involving the infantry — due to the real risk of there being victims in the ranks of the Israeli army.
This is precisely the problem that the government and High Command have come up against: Israeli public opinion no longer has the capacity to resist that it still had some 15 years ago. As the commentator Uzi Benziman has accurately observed, "[Army chief] Ehud Barak and his colleagues do not hide their feeling that the resistance of Israeli citizens has eroded, and that we are no longer able to muster up the same spirit of sacrifice in the face of the unfortunate victims whom we used to see as an additional tax on our existence.
"There are several reasons for the change of attitude in the Israeli population: fatigue, the aspiration towards a normal life without perpetual mourning, and the hope of taking advantage of the end of the superpower conflict which accompanied the Arab-Israeli conflict for decades. But what has had the greatest impact has been the feeling that an agreement with our neighbours is an imminent possibility. When peace is within arm's reach, people's attitude changes, as do their priorities."6
Right attacks Rabin
The right is also aware of this change, and accuses the government of feeding into read opinion piece in which he attacks Prime Minister Rabin for his weakness. Harel writes, "The chickens have come home to roost for those who panicked in the face of pressures from Meretz and the media to quickly put an end to the 'settling of scores' operation, and those who didn't have the courage and patience to get the maximum
"Those who did not dare to demand a halt to Hezbollah operations in the security zone are responsible for the real tragedy [the death of 8 Israeli soldiers in an ambush]. This is another rotten fruit that has fallen on our heads because the tired nerves of the prime minister cracked in the face of the whining of inhabitants in the north 'who could take no more'."?
For Harel and his ilk, Greater Israel justifies all sacrifices, and any blood that flows is oil for the wheels of the history of Zionist redemption. But they are in a minority today, and Benziman is much closer to the Israeli reality of the 1990s when he ends his analysis by calling on Rabin to speed up negotiations with Syria and prepare a withdrawal from occupied south Lebanon.
He adds, "even those who are not defeatists have the right to question a policy which creates [Israeli] victims in order to preserve the security zone - and this at a time when an agreement with Syria that would also cover Israeli-Lebanese border problems is within reach. Why not make every effort to conclude, within the framework of the peace negotiations, an agreement with Syria that would propose security measures that could replace the security zone and the conception behind it?"*
5. Ha'aretz, July 23, 1993
6. Ha'aretz, July 22, 1993.
7. Israël Harel, Ha'aretz, August 23, 1993.
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