Israelis continue the killing following the Lebanon "withdrawal".

Towards the end of the recent conflict in Lebanon, Israel increased it's use of cluster bombs. There is no obvious military reason for doing so, other than to inflict more casualties _after_ the "end of hostilitities".

Cluster bombs are notorious for failing to detonate, and in effect become anti-personnel mines. As refugees start to return to the areas which they were forced out of by the Israelis, and relief agencies start to move in to the worst effected areas, it is inevitable that there would be more casualties. It is also inevitable that most of the casualties will be children.

In Israeli newspaper "Haaretz" an IDF commander expressed his concerns about the totally inappropriate use of these weapons:

"What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war.

Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head 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 phosphorous shells during the war, widely forbidden by international law. According to their claims, the vast majority of said explosive ordinance was fired in the final 10 days of the war.

According to UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs (Jan Egeland):

“These devices are going to be with us for many, many months, and possibly years”, he said. What was “shocking and completely immoral” was that 90 per cent of the cluster-bomb strikes had occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when everybody knew that there would be an end to hostilities. “It shouldn’t have happened”, he said. Every day, people were maimed and killed by those devices. Civilians were going to die, disproportionately, again -– not during the war, but after the end of the conflict.

So, why would Israel deliberately take actions which would indiscriminately continue killing Lebanese (or international relief workers) beyond the "official end to hostilities"? The only reasons that I can think of are:

1. To inhibit the deployment of relief to the effected areas, thereby increasing the risk of starvation and disease to returning refugees.

2. To increase the Lebanese casualties beyond the cease-fire agreed with the UN.

Are these the actions of a state that was genuinely defending it's citizens, or are they effectively further examples of genocidal policy in Lebanon? The answer should be clear to anyone reading this.

Joe McGonagle