News Analysis - Israel's attacks on Gaza and Lebanon
WORKERS, OCT 2006 ISSUE
The brutal Israeli blockade of Gaza's 1.3 million people continues. Since 27 June, Israeli forces have been attacking and re-occupying Gaza. They have killed more than 260 Palestinians, including 64 children and 26 women. 1,200 Palestinians have been injured. One Israeli soldier has been killed and 26 injured.
Israeli air strikes destroyed Gaza's electricity power station, so 55 per cent of power has been lost.
The Israeli government is withholding the tax revenues it takes from the people of Gaza. Other governments have been assisting the Israeli strangulation by also holding back funds. The EU has withdrawn all support since the March elections won by Hamas. The US state has pressurised Arab banks into stopping the transfer of any funds to the elected government.
But this same US state gives $3 billion a year to Israel, so that it can arm its forces and build new illegal settlements in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.
Lebanon
The war on Lebanon killed 1,393 people, injured 5,350 and displaced more than 1,150,000.
During the war Israeli forces used illegal weapons. The head of an Israeli Defense Force rocket unit in Lebanon said, "What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs." He stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets. In addition, soldiers in IDF artillery units testified that the army used phosphorus shells during the war, forbidden by international law. According to their claims, the vast majority of this explosive ordnance was fired in the final ten days of the war.
The rocket unit commander stated that Multiple Launch Rocket System platforms were heavily used. These can fire huge numbers of mostly unguided rockets designed to burst into sub-munitions at a planned altitude in order to blanket enemy army and personnel on the ground with smaller explosive rounds. They have a margin of error of as much as 1,200 metres from the intended target to the area hit.
Ehud Olmert, the Israeli PM, boasted to the Knesset's foreign affairs and defence committee, "The claim that we lost is unfounded. Half Lebanon is destroyed. Is that a loss?"
But Hezbollah too committed war crimes by deliberately targeting Israeli civilians. During the month-long conflict, Hezbollah fired nearly 4,000 rockets into northern Israel, killing 43 civilians, seriously injuring 33 others and forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians to take refuge in shelters or flee. Hezbollah argued that its rocket attacks were a reprisal for Israeli attacks on civilians in Lebanon and were aimed at stopping such attacks. But international law forbids the targeting of civilians and reprisals.
Blair
Blair's inflexible opposition to calling for a ceasefire in Lebanon wrecked Britain's declining reputation in the Middle East and destroyed all hope that British diplomacy could help broker a peace in the Middle East. It also significantly weakened his position here; opposing a ceasefire was so obviously unpopular that eight junior ministers resigned. Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells has now admitted that an earlier call for a ceasefire "might have worked".