NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9660

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From: Hank Roth <[e-mail]>
Subject: Israel's Aggression in Lebanon (III)
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{From: ISRAEL'S WAR IN LEBANON: Eyewitness Chronicles of the
Invasion and Occupation, edited by Franklin P. Lamb, Bertrand
Russell Peace Foundation & South End Press, 1984}

INTRODUCTION--Part 4

ISRAEL'S CLAIM OF LAWFUL REPRISAL

On June 6, 1893, the Israeli government announced that its
invasion of Lebanon was an act of lawful military reprisal for an
attack on the Israeli ambassador in London. Since then, elements
within the Israeli government, as well as the Israel lobby, have
continued to argue that the invasion was a lawful reprisal under
international law.

In a memorandum dated July 18, 1982, from the Israeli Ministry of
Defense to the U.S. State Department, Israel stated:

  "The Israeli operation thus constituted a direct...result of a
   conflict initiated, planned and pursued by the terrorists...and
   may not be detached from the threats and tragic provocations
   which immediately preceded it."

The United States Goverment however, does not accept that
reprisals are within the scope of self-defense. Acting Secretary
of State Kenneth Rush has written of the United States' position
as recently as 1974:

  It is the established policy of the United States that a State is
  responsible for the international use of armed force originating
  from its territory...

  You [a U.S. legal scholar] would add a complementary principle,
  namely, that where a State cannot or will not fulfill its
  international legal obligations to prevent the use of its
  territory for the unlawful exercise of force, the wronged State
  is entitled to use force, by way of reprisal, to redress, by
  self-help, the violation of internatinal law which it has
  suffered.

  As you know, [the U.S. General Assembly] resolution
  2625...contains the following categorical statement: "States have
  a duty to refrain from acts of reprisal involving the use of
  force." That injunction codifies resolutions of the Security
  Council which have so affirmed.

  The United States has supported and supports the foregoing
  principle. Of course we recognize that the practice of states is
  not always consistent with this principle and that it may
  sometimes be difficult to distinguish the exercise of
  proportionate self-defense from an act of reprisal. Yet,
  essentially for reasons of the abuse to which the doctrine of
  reprisals particularly lends itself, we think it desireable to
  endeavor to maintain the distinction between acts of lawful self-
  defense and unlawful reprisals.

Nevertheless, for the sake of argument and to utilize
international legal principles most favorable to Israel, an
examination of the Israeli claim of lawful military reprisal is
warranted. Lawful reprisals are actions taken which, while
unlawful in themselves, may become justified, under certain
specific circumstances, as a result of illegal action taken by
the adversary. There are three legal requirements under
international customary law for the use of reprisals:

  1. a demonstrable and manifest violation of international law
     by the object of the reprisal;

  2. a demand by the offended state for the termination of the
     violation and adherence to the law; and

  3. a reasonable proportionality between the alleged violation
     of law and the military measures taken in reprisal.

International law regulating the use of reprisals has been
succinctly summarized by Professor William A. Bishop, Jr. In
taking a military action which the actor claims is a lawful
reprisal, he writes, the act of reprisal

  must respond to grave and manifestly unlawful acts committed by
  an adversary government, its military commanders, or combatants
  for whom the adversary is responsible.

  It must be for the purpose of compelling the adversary to observe
  the law of armed conflict. Reprisals cannot be undertaken for
  revenge, spite or punishment. Rather, they are directed against
  an adversary in order to induce him to refrain from further
  violations of the law of armed conflict.

  If an appeal or other methods fail, reprisals should not be
  undertaken automatically.

  A reprisal must be proportional to the original violation.
  Although a reprisal need not conform in kind to the same type of
  acts complained of (bombardment for bombardment, weapon for
  weapon) it may not significantly exceed the adversary's violation
  either in violence or effect. Effective but disproportionate
  reprisals cannot be justified by the argument that only an
  excessive response will forstall further TRANSGRESSIONS.
  [Emphasis added.]

Reprisals against the civilian population and individual
civilians are absolutely forbidden. Moreover, reprisals against
the persons or property of prisoners of war, including the
wounded and sick, are explicitly forbidden by Article 33 of the
Geneva Conventions of 1949. Collective reprisals or penalties and
punishment of prisoners of war are likewise prohibited. In
addition, the most recent Protocol Additional to the Geneva
Conventions of 1949, effective as of August 12, 1979, relates to
the protection of victims of international armed conflict. It is
very explicit: "Attacks against the civilian population or
civilians by way of reprisals are prohibited."

>From even this brief consideration, it is quite obvious that
Israel did not meet the requirements of the international law
governing reprisals. First, the British Government specifically
found that the wounding of the Israeli ambassador in London was
not committed by the Palestine Liberation Organization, the oft-
claimed object of the Israeli reprisals. Rather, Scotland Yard
investigations concluded that the assault was the work of the so-
called Abu-Nidal Organization, which is the sworn enemy of the
PLO branches controlled by Yassir Arafat, has admitted
assassinating several PLO diplomatic representatives, and
attempted more than once to assassinate PLO chairman Arafat. Sir
Anthony Parsons, Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom
to the United Nations, commented on the incident to the Security
Council in these terms:

  ...As the Council will know, the British authorities have made
  arrests in connection with this appalling crime. Four men are now
  in custody. As a result of the preliminary inquiries the police
  have discovered a list of names which includes not only that of
  Ambassador Argov but also that of the representative of the
  Palestine Liberation Organization in London.

  This assassination attempt, however despicable, does not in any
  way justify the massive attacks on Lebanese towns and villages by
  the Israeli Air Force, attacks which have already inflicted major
  loss of life, casualties and damage to property.

Further, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stated that

  ...she was convinced that the shooting Thurday night of the
  Israeli Ambassador, Shlomo Argov, was not the reason for the
  Israeli attack on Palestinian positions in Lebanon.

Recent statements from Israel make plain that the invasion of
Lebanon had been readied long before the assault in London. On
April 18, 1981, 14 months before the invasion, an Israeli Army
spokesman, Brigadier General Yaakov, told THE NEW YORK TIMES, "We
are on the offensive. We are the aggressors. We are penetrating
the so-called State of Lebanon, and we go after them wherever
they hide."

On August 14, 1982, Defense Minister Sharon suggested to Italian
journalist Oriana Fallaci that both Secretary of Defense
Weinberger and Secretary of State Haig not only had advance
knowledge of the plans for the invasion, but approved them. This
claim was recently confirmed by former President Carter. Sharon
also told Fallaci, "We had evaluated the various possibilities of
a Soviet intervention and we had examined them with the
Americans...we reached the conclusion that the Soviet Union would
not intervene."

On July 8, 1982, Sharon told THE JERUSALEM POST that he had been
"planning this operation since I took office" (July 1981). In
August, he told the Knesset that he had secretly traveled to
Beirut in January 1982 in order to make plans on the spot.
Similarly, General Eitan told the Israeli press that "operational
plans for `Peace in Galilee' started eight months ago."

CONCLUSION

The above examination of Israel's "lawful reprisal" claim leads
to the conclusion that its invasion could not have been a lawful
reprisal. It was

* not in response to manifestly unlawful acts;

* substantially conducted against the Lebanese and Palestinian
  civilian population, of whom approximately 20,000 were killed,
  30,000 wounded, and 600,000 made homeless;

*in no way proportional to any alleged "original violation"; and

*apparently undertaken for the purpose of revenge, territorial
  conquest and forced concessions from the Lebanese government.

Rather than a lawful reprisal for the violation of the PLO-Israel
ceasefire, the invasion appears to have been launched because the
cease-fire DID hold--and it held despite the fact that, according
to the United Nations, Israel had invaded Lebanon's air space and
territorial waters more than 2,700 times between July 1981 and
May 1982.

Indeed, Israel made at least two attempts during this period to
provoke the PLO into breaking the ceasefire. On April 21, Israel
attacked targets in southern Lebanon, killing 35. The pretext was
the death of an Israeli soldier whose vehicle hit a mine inside
Lebanon, where he was not supposed to be. The PLO did not respond
to the attack. On May 9, Israel bombed southern Lebanon and
killed six people. Its reason for the attack was that a soldier
was slightly wounded in Lebanon. This time the PLO fired warning
shots into Israel, but did not aim at settlements and inflicted
no casualties. As columnist Anthony Lewis wrote in the NEW YORK
TIMES on June 7, 1982:

  For nine months, not a single rocket or shell was fired by PLO
  gunners into Israel. When Israeli planes bombed Lebanon on April
  21 for the first time since the truce started, the PLO did not
  respond. When  there was another bombing on May 9, there was a
  limited response: about 100 rockets that Israel said caused no
  damage or casualties. Then, after the massive Israeli bombings
  last week, the PLO responded with full-scale barrages.

  In short, the cease-fire kept the Galilee safe until Israel
  bombed Lebanon. The argument that aggressive new military action
  was needed to keep the rockets out turns reality upside down.

The fact is that Israel had never liked the cease-fire negotiated
by U.S. envoy Philip Habib, because it delayed and thwarted the
attack on Lebanon that Sharon and Eitan had been planning since
July 1981. As Professor Yohoshua Poreth wrote in the June 25,
1982, issue of HA'ARETZ:

  I think the Israeli government's decision (or to be more
  exact, its two leaders' decision) resulted from the fact that the
  cease-fire had held...Yasser Arafat had succeeded in doing the
  impossible. He managed an indirect agreeement, through American
  mediation, with Israel and even managed to keep it for a whole
  year...this was a disaster for Israel. If the PLO agreed upon and
  maintained a ceasefire they may in the future agree to a more
  far-reaching political settlement and maintain that too.

  If in the future we shall be closer to negotiations with other
  Arab bodies, apart from Egypt, will the Israeli government be
  able to claim that the PLO is no more than a wild gang of
  murderers, who are not legitimate negotiating partners? Won't
  there be pressure to include the PLO in future negotiations over
  the future of the territories occupied in 1967?

During the same period, the American-Israeli Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel propaganda arm that
concentrates on the U.S. congress, sent memoranda to members of
Congress repeating false charges from the Israeli Army that the
PLO had violated the cease-fire 100 to 150 times. Many members
accepted this disinformation without question. Sen. Gary Hart
(D.-Colo.) told the Senate on June 17, 1982, that "the Israeli
operation in southern Lebanon followed more than 100 documented
cease-fire violations by the PLO, the latest of which was an
artillery barrage of more than 1,000 shells into northern Israel
on a Sabbath morning." Other senators, including Cranston (D.-
Calif.) and Sepecter (R.-Pa.), repeated false AIPAC claims that
the PLO had committed 100 to 150 violations of the cease-fire.

The conclusion of law is that Israel did not meet the
international legal requirements that constitute lawful reprisal
and that its invasion of Lebanon was consequently illegal on this
ground. As there exists virtually no credible evidence that
Israel's invasion of Lebanon was based on legitimate self-
defense, or that it ws a lawful reprisal under international law,
the question arises what were the aims of the Israeli invasion of
Lebanon.

ISRAEL'S AIMS

Israel has claimed that its original intention was only to
protect its settlers and citizens in northern Israel by
establishing a 25-mile CORDON SANITAIRE on Lebanese soil. Yet on
June 29, THE TIMES of London reported that an Israel Air Force
officer who had taken part in the early bombardment of Lebanon
said, "We had absolutely no intention of stopping at the Zahrani
line [25 miles north of the international border]. We dashed
northward as far as possible without any intention whatsoever of
stopping." There is much other evidence along similar lines, and
of course an incursion of "only" 25 miles would still have been a
considerable invasion of a small independent nation.

Many theories have been advanced by scholars, commentators and
correspondents as to what lay behind the thinking of Israel's
leaders in launching the assault on Lebanon. Principal elements
include:

* A psychological need expressed by Prime Minister Begin when he
  described Operation "Peace for Galilee" as necessary "to heal the
  trauma of the Yom Kippur war." By means of an offensive attack,
  Israel could restore its image, damaged from the fact that Arab
  armies nearly succeeded in entering Israel itself in October,
  1973.

* A perceived necessity to recoup the "loss" of Sinai, which had
  been returned to Egypt two months earlier. As Jansen noted, by
  advancing in the north Israel could compensate for a retreat from
  the south.

* The calculation that the time was right for a move against
  southern Lebanon because with the Reagan Administration,
  particularly Secretary of State Haig, Israel had a more
  sympathetic U.S. administration than ever before. Moreover,
  given the Iran/Iraq war and general Arab disunity, the timing
  was doubly propitious. Few if any Arab nations, it was
  calculated, would come to the aid of the PLO.

* The theory that war could have the sort of trickle-down effect
  that the 1967 war had. Israel is suffering from 200 percent
  annual inflation and approximately a $4 billion balance of
  payments deficit that forced the government to print massive
  amounts of money; some leaders may have calculated that war could
  take Israel from depression into an economic boom.

* The belief of Defense Minister Sharon and Israeli Chief of
  Staff Eitan that invasion of Lebanon could result in the
  extinction of Palestinian nationalism. Both men believe that
  there is no room within Palestine for Jewish AND Palestinian
  nationalism. As was reported in the August 5 TIMES of London,
  Sharon stated: "The bigger the blow and the more we damage the
  PLO infrastructure, the more the Arabs in Judea and Samaria and
  Gaza will be ready to negotiate with us and establish
  coexistence."

* Defense Minister Sharon's calculation that the invasion of
  Lebanon would create the possiblity of emergence of a Palestinian
  state in Jordan. According to TIME magazine of March 1, 1982,
  "Sharon, with the backing of Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, is
  also touting a political rationale for such a maneuver. He
  believes that the PLO would have no place to go except Jordan,
  from which it was forcibly expelled in a brutal crackdown by King
  Jussein's military in 1970-71. With a little assistance from
  Israel, Sharon believes, the PLO could overthrow King Hussein and
  establish a Palestinian state in Jordan. ...In Sharon's view, if
  the PLO were to take over Jordan with Israel's backing, such a
  Palestinian state would be more cooperative than one centered on
  the West Bank."

* Israel's designs on the water of Lebanon's Litani River.
  According to Thomas Stauffer, writing in the January 20, 1982,
  CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: "The Golan Heights are even more
  important in the context of Israel's future water policy as a
  steppingstone--quite literally--to the liberation or occupation
  of the southeastern corner of the Lebanon and physical control of
  the Litani. While estimates of the available flow from the
  Litani differ considerably, Israel sources argue that a minimum
  of 400 millon cubic meters yearly could be diverted into Israel--
  or as much as 700 million if the Lebanese dam upstream could be
  destroyed or its spillways opened." Certain Israeli leaders have
  looked longingly at the Litani River since the early Zionist
  settlements in Palestine under the British mandate. Plans for
  acquiring the Litani were articulated soon after Israel came into
  being in 1948, and the recently published diaries of Moshe
  Sharret reval Cabinet-level discussions on the issue in the mid-
  1950s.

According to the CHRISTINA SCIENCE MONITOR of February 8, 1982,
then Lebanese Minister of Information Michel Edde, stated that an
Israeli assault on Lebanon was "imminent---only a matter of
weeks," confirmed that Lebanon feared Israel's designs on
expanded water supplies: "He emphasized that the Israeli
objectives must include moving far into the Bekaa Valley well
above the Karaun Dam because `the waters of the Litani River are
useless without control of the dam.'"

* The thirst of battle. One of Sharon's motivatons, as he
  explained at the Israeli War College, was that nine years after
  the 1973 war a whole generation of Israeli soldiers had no
  experience in battle, and they needed it.

* The destruction of the PLO infrastructure as a political force
  and as a competitor for Eretz Israel.

* The expulsion of the PLO and its armed forces from Lebanon.

* The elimination of PLO influence in the West Bank and Gaza in
  order to open the way for the emergence of a Paletinian
  leadership more in tune with Israeli notions of Palestinian
  autonomy and continued control of the occupied territories. On
  June 10, Israeli civilian administrator of the West Bank Menachem
  Milsem was reported by the INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE as
  stating: "We are fighting the PLO in order to make peace with
  the Palestinians."

* The ambition of Sharon. Colunnist Anthony Lewis, writing in the
  June 24, NEW YORK TIMES, said that Sharon has made his strategic
  view clear. "Apart perhaps from Egypt, he wants Israel to be
  surrounded not by stable, moderate Arab governments but by a
  power vacuum. He wants to destablize King Hussein's Jordan and
  his ambition reaches even to Saudi Arabia."

* The element of religious fanaticism. On June 8, 1982, the Chief
  Rabbinate, headed by ASkenazi and Sephardic Chief Rabbis, a
  central part of the Israeli establishment, decreed that the
  invasion was "a divinely inspired war" meriting "divine
  sanction." As author Michael Jansen has pointed out, such a holy
  war is the equivalent of the Islamic Jihad, an object of Israeli
  derision when proclaimed by their Muslim enemies. On July 28,
  during the siege of Beirut, Chief Rabbi Goran proclaimed that
  the war was not only a just war but an obligatory one.

HA'ARETZ recently carried an article entitled "THIS IS OURS---AND
THAT TOO" in which the author, Yitzhak Shteiner, military rabbi,
compared the invasion of Lebanon to a campaign waged by Joshua
3,200 years ago in which he made a "preventive" attack toward the
north just as the Israeli army did in June 1982.

* The dissolution of Arab States. With respect to Israel's longer
  term goals, Michael Jansen, in his recent book THE BATTLE OF
  BEIRUT, theorizes that Israel's aim is to dissolve Lebanon into
  five provinces: a Christian Maronite--dominated area, a Muslim
  area, a Druze area, an area dominated by Syria, and finally a
  largely Shia area in the south under the control of Israel
  directly through militias like that of the late Saad Haddad.

Jansen postulates that on the eastern front Israel's goal is to
encourage the dissolution of Syria and Iraq into ethnically or
religiously dominant areas as in Lebanon. Syria is to be divided
into a coastal Shiite Alawite state, a Sunni northern neighbor, a
Druze state in the Aleppo area, a second Sunni state in the
Damascus area hostile to its northern neighbor, with another
Druze state perhaps in Golan and in the Hauran and northern
Jordan area. Moreover, Iraq is also preceived as divided
according to religious and ethnic denominations. Three or more
states around Basra, Baghdag, and Mosul, and the Shiite area in
the south, will separate from the Sunni and Jurdish north. Jansen
concludes that the Israeli aims contemplate a revival of the
communal system of the Ottoman Empire.

With respect to Egypt, the objective is to break up Egypt into
territorially distinct geographical regions; a Christian Coptic
state in upper Egypt alongside several weak states for the
Egyptian Muslims.

* Peace overtures from the Palestine Liberation Organization. On
  the eve of the Israeli invasion, the Palestine Liberation
  Organization was prepared to sign a nonaggression pact with
  Israel, using the good offices of the United States. ISRAEL
  REJECTED THE OFFER [My emphasise]. The disclosure of the
  nonaggression pact was confirmed by Israeli Minister of Tourism
  Abraham Sharir on January 13, 1983, at an Israeli Bonds dinner
  in Paris. This confirmation also supports past statements by
  various organizations, including the PLO, that have long argued that
  there was a plan for an agreement between the PLO and Israel, and
  that Israel's invasion of Lebanon was launched partially in order
  to prevent the agreement from coming into force.

In the weeks leading up to the invasion, it is likely that all
the considerations described above played a role in the decision
of the Israeli leadership to invade Lebanon.

                <End of Introduction>
---------------------------------------------
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