Friday, October 06, 2006

Israeli Bomblets Plague Lebanon

Since the end of the Israeli war with Lebanon more than three people each day have been killed or wounded by the cluster bombs that the Israelis dropped during the final days of that campaign.

There are more than a million cluster bombs still lying, unexploded, on Lebanon's streets. More than a bomb each for every single person of Lebanon's 650,000 civilian population.

They are stuck in the branches of olive trees and the broad leaves of banana trees. They are on rooftops, mixed in with rubble and littered across fields, farms, driveways, roads and outside schools.

As of Sept. 28, officials here said cluster bombs had severely wounded 109 people — and killed 18 others.

Officials are stating that - if the money does not run out - they will be able to clear Lebanon of cluster bombs within 15 months. 15 months before it will be safe for the Lebanese to walk their own streets.

“Our priority at the moment is to clean houses, main roads and gardens so that the displaced people can return to their villages,” said Col. Mohammad Fahmy, head of the national mine clearing office. “The next stage will be cleaning agricultural lands.”

In Lebanon there are two explanations of why Israel unleashed cluster bombs at the end of the war: to inflict as much damage as possible on Hezbollah before withdrawing, or to litter the south with unexploded cluster bombs as a strategy to keep people from returning right away.

No real explanation has ever been given by the Israelis as to why they indulged in this barbaric practice. And one can only imagine the adjectives the press would have reached for to describe the barbarity of this action had it been carried out by a figure like Saddam Hussein.

But Olmert remains in his office, a mystery given the sheer scale of the anger the Israeli public felt after the nightmare campaign he pursued in Lebanon, with not a word of criticism emanating from either Bush or Blair regarding the blatant illegality of his actions during the last few days of that campaign.

Indeed, even some members of the Israeli army have raised concerns where Bush and Blair apparently see none:

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an article on Sept. 12 anonymously quoting the head of a rocket unit in Lebanon who was critical of the decision to use cluster bombs. “What we did was insane and monstrous; we covered entire towns in cluster bombs,” Haaretz quoted the commander as saying.

Repeated efforts to get Israeli officials to explain the rationale behind the use of the bombs have proved fruitless, with spokesmen referring all queries to short official statements arguing that everything done conformed with international law.

Israel have repeatedly refused to give any rationale for their actions and the US and UK have pointedly refused to question why the Israelis did what they did.

“This is what they are living with every day,” said Simon Lovell, a supervisor with one of the clearance teams as he looked at five unexploded bomblets poking out of the soft, rocky soil of the Hussein family farm.

Across the street, Hussein Muhammad, 48, at home with his wife and four children, waited for the clearance team. His olive trees were heavy with fruit, but he could not tend to the harvest.

“I feel that the land has become my enemy,” he said. “It represents a danger to my life and my kids’ lives.”

This is why the sending of Condoleezza Rice to the Middle East to kick-start the Road Map is such a joke. Three people every single day are being killed and maimed by Israel's decision to drop these heinous weapons on Lebanon whilst the United nations were in the process of negotiating a ceasefire. Three people every single day.

And we can't even bring ourselves to issue a single word of condemnation. And we wonder why our efforts at peace are greeted with suspicion?

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