Lebanon must avoid the crimes of Gaza

Even before a United Nations fact-finding mission led by the South African judge Richard Goldstone released its report on the Gaza war earlier this week, accusing Israel and Hamas of having perpetrated war crimes and crimes against humanity, you knew what direction the ensuing discussion would take: Israeli officials, like supporters of Israel all over, would condemn the report as biased, while Hamas and its enthusiasts would sidestep blame, insisting the movement acted in self-defense.

The members of the mission also called on Israel’s government and the Palestinian Authority (which, in reality, has no jurisdiction over Gaza) to conduct independent investigations within six months, otherwise the UN should take the matter to the International Criminal Court.

The debate over war crimes can be tiresome, shot through with self-righteousness and deceit. When Hamas, to defend itself, insists that its rockets during the Gaza war were primed to hit Israeli military positions, but because of their shoddiness veered off course to hit civilian targets, this is nonsense. From the start, the movement’s rocket arsenal served no purpose but to be a terror weapon against civilians. Attacking nonmilitary targets has long been a cornerstone of Hamas’ deterrence capability, as when it dispatched suicide bombers to Israeli cities.

By the same token, officials in Israel will intentionally miss the forest for the trees when defending their state’s military actions. Most Israeli war crimes, it seems, have some overriding justification. But anyone who has been on the receiving end of Israeli attacks knows that the targeting of civilians and of nonmilitary objectives is also a vital component of Israel’s deterrence strategy. Nothing, for example, could possibly validate Israel’s malicious firing of many thousands of rounds of cluster munitions into southern Lebanon in the final days of the 2006 war, except to make large swathes of the border area inaccessible to civilians.

The Gaza mission is but one in a long line of fact-finding missions investigating conflicts between Israel and the Arabs. Israel itself has examined its misdeeds on occasion, most significantly in the devastating Kahan commission report on the Sabra and Shatila massacre of September 1982. Much has been made of how the report stated that Israel’s then-defense minister, Ariel Sharon, bore “indirect responsibility” for the massacre. In fact that misunderstood statement only delimited who executed the victims and who stood back and allowed it to happen.

In a devastating passage, the writers made their meaning clear: “When we are dealing with the issue of indirect responsibility, it should also not be forgotten that the Jews in various lands of exile … suffered greatly by pogroms perpetrated by various hooligans … The Jewish public’s stand has always been that the responsibility for such deeds falls not only on those who rioted and committed the atrocities, but also on those who were responsible for safety and public order, who could have prevented the disturbances and did not fulfill their obligations in this respect.”

Ultimately, Sharon resigned after the report’s release, only to be elected two decades later as Israeli prime minister. However, what the UN report on Gaza, like the Kahan report, shows, is that even a simple document can rip away the veneer of false rectitude in wartime. We shouldn’t overstate things. While a more developed international architecture is in place than ever before to impose humanitarian laws and standards, future wars may be as brutal as they are today. What behavior does this impose on states?

Lebanese officials should be asking that question more urgently than others. A war with Israel may or may not happen in the coming years, but if there is one place in the Middle East where such a probability remains high, it’s Lebanon. The 2006 war brought about efforts by some groups to formally blame Israel for war crimes, just as the Israelis pointed out that Hizbullah’s targeting of civilians also constituted a violation of the laws of war. Both sides had a case, even though the burden in terms of victims tilted very much more the Lebanese way, with some 1,200 people, mostly noncombatants, killed and hundreds of thousands displaced. If the Lebanese ever discuss the UN report on Gaza, their first aim should be to determine how it can be used to limit the fallout in Lebanon in the event of a new conflict. With present and former Israeli officials promising that the country will pay an onerous price, there is a need to lay the groundwork internationally to make this more difficult. And such an effort must not only include governments, but public opinion. Beirut must also examine its options with respect to the International Criminal Court.

However, for the Lebanese case to have any real meaning, there must be a commitment from Lebanon’s side to avoid breaching the laws of war. The chances of Hizbullah respecting these are as slim as the Israelis doing so. But that doesn’t prevent the next Lebanese government from taking a clear position on the matter in its ministerial statement, to the effect that Lebanon’s right to defend itself will not preclude its respect for the Geneva Conventions and the protection of civilians. Hizbullah will resist this, since its ability to bombard Israeli population centers defines its brand of asymmetrical warfare. However, the party could find it difficult to oppose such a step if it were framed as a way of protecting the hundreds of thousands of Shiites who would suffer most from an Israeli onslaught.

The UN Gaza report may well be filed away like most other documents on wartime abuse. But it can be used imaginatively, particularly by Lebanon. To avoid becoming a victim also means to avoid victimizing others, and even if that rule is almost certain to break down in a new confrontation with Israel, doing nothing about this today is indefensible.