Experts argue about facts and legality of Israeli attacks on Lebanon
Israel is resorting to carpet bombing Lebanon trying to inflict the worst possible results on its people, Rami Mortada, the Lebanese ambassador to the United Kingdom, said on Thursday.
“The only purpose in targeting that the Israelis have is inflicting maximum civilian casualties because if you follow the diagram of their targets, you don’t find any rationale. I mean what’s the rationale in hitting a six-story building,” he said during an interview on GNT with Tom Burges Watson.
Mortada added that Israel would be using the same methods as it has been using in Gaza to prevent the residents from fleeing, cutting off all possible means of escaping.
“It wants to block any way out for Lebanese fleeing for their lives toward Syria. That’s another criminal war tactic. They are taking civilians as hostages,” he said.
Retired US four-star General Philip Breedlove, former commander of the US European Command, gave a different perspective during the same show. He acknowledged the tragedy of civilian casualties but emphasized that Israel is making concerted efforts to minimize them.
“We do not support nor want this to impact the people of either Gaza or Lebanon. I don’t believe that anyone thinks that that’s what Israel wants to do. If they do I think they are mistaken. Israel doesn’t want that, but Israel has to defend itself,” he said told Al Arabiya News.
Breedlove pointed fingers at Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, stressing that the latter was calling the shots, and saying that the purpose of Hamas and Hezbollah was in fact to use civilians as human shields and civilian casualties to run a smear campaign against Israel.
“(…) if [Hamas and Hezbollah] keep kicking the hornets’ nest, if they keep agitating and killing Israelis then Israel is going to respond and what Hamas and Hezbollah are counting on is that the world opinion, and frankly journalists and everyone else, will turn against Israel and they will defeat Israel for Hamas and Hezbollah,” he said.
Meanwhile, William Schabas, professor for international law at Middlesex University, during the same news show said that regardless of the situation, Israel as a military actor would have a legal responsibility to assure that civilians would not be harmed.
“(…) the attitude that we take into the proportionality of the means that are used, to the choice of weapons, to the targeting, all of this really is the same whether Hezbollah is the state or whether it’s a non-state actor…Israel is required to act proportionately and that means that in effect they have to protect civilian non-combatants.”
No legal difference
Furthermore, he said that the frequently reiterated argument that Israel was acting only in self-defense did not matter in this context and is a “sterile avenue.”
Hezbollah on October 8, 2023, began to launch attacks on northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas, who a day before had pushed into Israel killing over 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostage.
Israel responded with months-long attacks on Gaza that have killed at least 41,534 people, mostly civilians.
Last week, Israel began launching attacks on southern Lebanon and the capital Beirut that have killed over 700 people and displaced over 90,000. The attacks followed two series of explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members.
Although Israel refused to comment on the pager and walkie-talkie explosions, the Middle Eastern country was widely blamed for them.
Ambassador Mortada further appealed to the international community to undertake all possible efforts to reach a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
“I think all the levers that exist to influence Israeli behavior should be used because what’s at stake here is regional stability…we don’t want Lebanon to become the second Gaza.”
Israel has recently rejected all proposals for a ceasefire with some members of government even threatening to resign.
