The Arab
Association for Human Rights (HRA) has accused the Israeli military of
committing a war crime by placing military hardware, including artillery
positions, inside Arab towns and villages during the war with Lebanon in July
2006.
The
Nazareth-based association last week published a report claiming Arab
communities were used as "human shields" by the Israeli military.
The
association argues that the danger this posed to the Arab population was far
from "theoretical": Arab communities hit by Hezbollah’s retaliatory rockets were
overwhelmingly those in which the Israeli army maintained a presence.
A total of
21 Arab Israeli citizens were killed in these strikes.
The report
said: "The study found that the Arab towns and villages that suffered the most
intensive attacks during the war were ones that were surrounded by military
installations, either on a permanent basis or temporarily during the course of
the war."
The
findings seem to support widespread complaints earlier voiced by Israel’s Arab
legislators that their communities were used to deter the Lebanese Shia militia,
Hezbollah, from targeting Israeli military positions.
At the time
the claims were dismissed by Israeli officials.
'Civilians in danger'
Hostilities
between Israel and Lebanon erupted on July 12, 2006 when Hezbollah attacked an
Israeli border post, killing three soldiers and capturing two. In response
Israel launched a wave of air strikes and a more limited ground invasion.
In addition
to 119 Israeli soldiers who died in these operations, the barrage of rockets
fired by Hezbollah into northern Israel killed 44 civilians and injured hundreds
more. The Shia militia was widely condemned for these attacks.
Hezbollah
fired some 660 rockets at 20 Arab communities during the war, confounding
expectations from Israeli officials and many observers that the militia would
target only Jewish areas.
The main
explanation until now has been that Hezbollah fired its rockets randomly into
Israel, killing Jews and Arabs indiscriminately.
However,
the HRA report, "Civilians in Danger", says that Hezbollah may have targeted the
permanent Israeli military bases, including army camps, airfields and weapons
factories, located in or near Arab towns.
It also
charged that the Israeli government failed to evacuate civilians from the area
of fighting, leaving Arab citizens particularly in danger.
Almost no
protective measures, such as building public shelters or installing air raid
sirens, had been taken in Arab communities, whereas they had been in Jewish
communities.
'Solely operational'
But an
Israeli military spokesperson told Al Jazeera the report's claims were unfounded
and were designed to create a false representation of events which occurred
during the fighting.
He said:
"The consideration applied in selecting the location of the [army’s]
installations was solely operational and did not reflect any other
consideration."
Tarek
Ibrahim, a lawyer and the author of the HRA's report, insists that Hezbollah's
rockets mostly targeted Arab communities where military installations had been
located and in the main avoided those where no such military positions existed.
"Hezbollah
claimed on several occasions that its rockets were aimed primarily at military
targets in Israel. Our research cannot prove that to be the case but it does
give a strong indication that Hezbollah’s claims may be true."
Hezbollah’s
Katyusha rockets were not precision-guided but, according to the report, the
short distances between Arab communities and Israeli military bases "are within
the margin of error of the rockets fired by Hezbollah".
In its
recommendations, the Human Rights Association called for the removal of all
Israeli military bases from civilian communities.
Human
shields?
The
report's findings do not come entirely as a surprise. Several Arab politicians
warned during the war that the 600,000 Arabs of the Galilee region were being
used effectively as "human shields".
In early
August 2006, near the end of the war, the most prominent Arab figure, Azmi
Bishara, told the Maariv newspaper: "What ordinary citizens are afraid to say,
the Arab Knesset members are declaring loudly. Israel turned the Galilee and the
Arab villages in particular into human shields by surrounding them with
artillery positions and missile batteries."
On a few
occasions the Israeli media have also indirectly revealed the fact that military
bases are located in Arab communities. A recent article in the daily Haaretz
newspaper, for example, reported a fire in an armaments factory in Nazareth, the
largest Arab community in Israel.
Ramez
Jeraisi, the mayor of Nazareth, where two children were killed by Hezbollah
rockets during the war, told Al Jazeera: "Nothing in this report is news to me.
We all know there is a military base inside Nazareth … although it is in our
city it is not under our jurisdiction so there is nothing we can do to get it
moved."
"If we
turned to the courts, they would not help either. No one, especially not Arabs,
is allowed to question Israel's security needs."
Near
kibbutzes
The HRA
report avoided dealing with the wider issue of whether the Israeli army used
Jewish communities in a similar manner during the war.
Ibrahim
said: "In part the reason was that we are an Arab organisation and that directs
the focus of our work. But there is also the difficulty that Israeli Jews are
unlikely to cooperate with our research."
Nonetheless, the report notes, there is evidence the army based itself in some
Jewish communities too. One Hezbollah rocket strike close to the northern border
hit Kfar Giladi, a rural cooperative community known as a kibbutz, killing 12
soldiers.
A member of
the kibbutz, Uri Eshkoli, recently told the Israeli media: "We deserve a medal
of honor for our assistance during the war. We opened our hotel to soldiers and
asked for no compensation. Moreover, soldiers stayed in the kibbutz throughout
the entire war."
Amatzia
Baram, a professor at Haifa University and regular media commentator during the
war as the city came under Hezbollah rocket attack, told Al Jazeera: "Given the
high concentration of army positions in the north, it would not surprise me to
learn that the army used Arab villages for its bases."
"If it did
so, then of course that was a bad mistake. Next time there is a war, the army
should be mindful of keeping its distance from civilian areas. However, in
practice I am sure its locations made zero difference to where Hezbollah fired
its rockets."
The report
faced several hurdles before publication. A stringent gagging order imposed by
the government since the war and a requirement to submit security-related
material to the military censor mean significant sections of the report had to
be cut.
The report
has received minimal coverage in the Hebrew media. Ibrahim said: "Few people
inside Israel want to hear that their army and government broke international
law in such a flagrant manner."
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