Israel Kills 4 UN Observers, including Canadian

[unimaginative2]

Israel troops 'ignored' UN plea

Israel had hit Khiam a number of times earlier on Tuesday
UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon contacted Israeli troops 10 times before an Israeli bomb killed four of them, an initial UN report says.



The post was hit by a precision-guided missile after six hours of shelling, diplomats familiar with the probe say.

UN-led crisis talks in Rome ended with no agreement to urge an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

In the latest fighting, up to 13 Israeli soldiers were reported killed in southern Lebanon on Wednesday.

Israel has not confirmed any deaths from among its soldiers, but says there have been 20 casualties in the clashes around the town of Bint Jbail.

More than 380 Lebanese and 42 Israelis have died in two weeks of conflict, which began after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on 12 July.

A Jordanian military plane arrives in Beirut to evacuate some of the most seriously wounded Lebanese civilians

Ten trucks loaded with food and medical supplies arrive in the southern town of Tyre

Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah warns on TV that his organisation will begin firing rockets further south into Israel than Haifa
Israeli regrets

The four unarmed UN observers from Austria, Canada, China and Finland, died after their UN post in the town of Khiam was hit by an Israeli air strike on Tuesday.

The UN report says each time the UN contacted Israeli forces, they were assured the firing would stop.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has expressed "deep regrets" over the deaths.

Israel is conducting an investigation into the deaths.

It has rejected accusations made by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that the targeting of the UN position was "apparently deliberate".

'Utmost urgency'

The Rome summit, called by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, brought together EU and Arab nations plus the US and Russia, but not Israel, Iran or Syria.

The conference released a declaration expressing "determination to work immediately to reach with utmost urgency a ceasefire to put an end to the current hostilities".

It also said a ceasefire "must be lasting, permanent and sustainable".

The statement called for an international force with a UN mandate for south Lebanon, and the full implementation of existing UN Security Council resolutions calling for the disarming of militias and deployment of Lebanese troops in the border region.

Mr Annan said it was important to work with the countries of the region, including Syria and Iran, to find a solution to the crisis.

But Condoleezza Rice was critical of the role of both countries.

"It's not a question of talking to Syria, it's whether Syria's prepared to act," she said.

In an impassioned speech, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora warned that more people would die if the ceasefire was delayed, and called for a Lebanese-Israeli prisoner exchange as part of plan to end the fighting.

 

[unimaginative2]

That first article was BBC, but this article from the Guardian is much more detailed.

Annan: Israel bombed UN base for hours

· UN chief proposes joint investigation
· No sign of ceasefire agreement
· Aid agencies criticise Blair

Staff and agencies
Wednesday July 26, 2006
Guardian Unlimited


UN personnel carry the body of one of the UN military observers who was killed by an Israeli bombardment of the southern Lebanese town of Khiyam. Photograph: Lotfallah Daher/AP



The UN general secretary, Kofi Annan, today accused the Israeli military of carrying out a sustained bombing of the UN base on the Lebanon-Israel border that culminated in the killing of four unarmed monitors.
Mr Annan said he had suggested to the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, that they carry out a joint investigation into the events that led to the shelling of the "well-established and well marked" Unifil (UN interim force in Lebanon) post in the town of Khiyam.

"I spoke to Mr Olmert and he definitely believes it was a mistake and has expressed his deep sorrow, " Mr Annan told a press conference in Rome.

"But the shelling started in the morning and went on until after 7pm. You cannot imagine the anguish of the unarmed men and women peacekeepers who were there."

According to a detailed timeline of the incident provided by an unidentified UN officer and reported by CNN, the first bomb exploded around 200 metres from the post at 1.20pm (11.20am BST) yesterday.

Unifil observers then telephoned their designated contact with the Israeli military, who assured them the attacks would stop. In the following hours, nine more bombs fell close to the post, each one followed by a call to the Israeli military, the UN officer said.

The main Unifil base in the town of Naqoura lost contact with the post at 7.40pm, seemingly the time when the post received a direct hit.

The UN office in Naqoura could not be contacted today.

The four monitors came from Austria, Canada, China and Finland. The Chinese foreign minister, Li Zhaoxing, said today he was saddened by the news and that it showed "we should try harder to call on the parties to be restrained and to be calm and restore the peace process of the Middle East immediately".

The 2,000-strong Unifil force, which sits on the Israel-Lebanon border, has suffered dozens of attacks and direct hits in two weeks of conflict. Israel is suspicious of the force and wants it beefed up with an international stabilisation force involving up to 20,000 troops.

Earlier Mr Olmert telephoned Mr Annan to express his "deep regrets" over the deaths of the UN monitors, the Israeli prime minister's office said.

Mr Annan said last night the air strike was "apparently deliberate" and other UN officials said the attacks on the UN bunker had continued during a rescue effort. Dan Gillerman, Israel's UN ambassador, reacted furiously to Mr Annan's comments last night, describing them as "premature and erroneous".

The deaths of the monitors cast a shadow over today's meeting in Rome, where foreign ministers gathered to discuss the two-week-old Israeli-Lebanese crisis.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, were among the ministers attending the talks in Rome, which ended with no clear indication of when a ceasefire would be achieved.

Meanwhile, at least nine Israeli soldiers were killed in heavy fighting with Hizbullah guerrillas in south Lebanon today, Arab television stations said.

Al-Jazeera said nine soldiers were killed in Bint Jbeil, while Al Arabiya television said at least 12 soldiers were killed there.

Israeli forces encircled the southern Lebanese town yesterday, with one commander describing it as the "capital of Hizbullah". The Israeli army said yesterday that it had killed up to 30 Hizbullah fighters as it aimed to dismantle Hizbullah command posts there and destroy rocket launchers.

The prime minister was today facing mounting pressure to endorse calls for an immediate ceasefire amid claims that his position and that of the Bush administration were putting civilian lives at risk.

Aid agencies, religious groups and the public sector union, Unison, wrote an open letter to Tony Blair condemning his refusal to back the UN's demands for a ceasefire.

The letter - signed by 14 organisations including Amnesty International, Christian Aid and the Muslim Council of Britain - warns that the UK government is diluting calls for peace. "

By failing to back the UN and call for an immediate ceasefire, the UK government has reduced the impact of international calls for an immediate halt to the violence," the letter says.

Mr Blair's official spokesman said the prime minister was engaged "almost on an hourly basis" in trying to secure support for a stabilisation force and was ready to take "heat" from critics. The government hoped to secure "broad agreement in principle" in Rome to the idea of a stabilisation force, the spokesman told reporters.

Israeli warplanes bombed 100 targets in southern Lebanon yesterday and one family of seven civilians was killed. More than 400 Lebanese have been killed in total.

Hizbullah yesterday fired some 70 rockets into northern Israel, killing a 15-year-old girl. More than 40 Israelis have died in the violence, including 18 who have been killed by rockets.

This morning, more Hizbullah rockets hit three areas of northern Israel, seriously injuring one person, medics said. The rockets fell in Haifa, Carmiel and Kiryat Bialik, where one person was seriously wounded, the medics said. It was not immediately clear if there were more injuries.

Meanwhile, a Jordanian military plane landed at Beirut's international airport this morning to evacuate people seriously wounded in the conflict.

Airport officials said the aircraft was the first jet to land at Beirut's airport since July 13, when Israeli warplanes bombed its runways and forced it to close. Israel said yesterday it would allow planes carrying humanitarian aid to land in Beirut. Jordan has a peace treaty with Israel.

 

[spmarshall]

So Israel killed one of our soldiers, who was not in armed combat. Can we (along with Austria, China and Finland) consider this an act of war? Or should we continue to practice double standards when it comes to the Middle East?

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

spm:

Don't forget the 7 Canadians killed in South Lebanon (incl. 3 children). What has the ruling party said about that so far? Zilch.

I guess they aren't the right kind of Canadian for outrage to be expressed.

AoD

 

[allabootmatt]

I think an act of war requires some sort of intended malice. Nobody is actually suggesting that Israel bombed this place intentionally, are they? what possible reason could they have to do so? I don't see any other explanation for this other than it being a colossal, stupid, and probably avoidable mistake...but the kind that does happen, even with precision weapons (see Belgrade, Chinese embassy in).

I'm not sure what school of morality this aligns me with, but there is a crucial distinction between intent and outcome. If Israel were targeting civilians, UN observers, and so on intentionally, they would be dying in the thousands and tens of thousands, not the low hundreds. Unfortunately when a terrorist group chooses to embed itself within a civilian population for the prupose of launching attacks that ARE intended to kill civilians, innocent people will die on both sides.

And I'm not swayed by the argument that Hizbollah provides social services to these people. Mussolini made the trains run on time, but that didn't make him (or another Fascist dictator famous for a similar feat, but who I shan't name because it's not an appropriate comparison) a good guy.

 

[unimaginative2]

Kofi Annan's comment, word-for-word, was "I am shocked and deeply distressed by the apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defence Forces."

 

[bizorky]

allabootmatt,

You raise some interesting points. As for being 100% sure whether the Isreali military targetted a UN observer post on purpose, no one knows for sure. Mistakes can be made. However, as this observation post has been there for some time, and as we are being told that these attacks are supposed to be "targetted" to hit Hezbollah, then one must worry about how accurate these attacks are overall.

As for moral arguments measuring distinctions between intent and outcome, when it comes to life and death issues the argument must be removed from the purely theoretical. The threshold between "just enough" and "too much" is a subjective line. Wanting to eliminate a terrorist group that threatens and kills is bounded by reasonable intent. Killing, destroying and crippling those unassociated to this group may not result in a useful outcome either for the short or long term.

However, one can't be sure that this is all there is to the Israeli strategy. Crippling Lebanese infrastructure seems to be done with the intent to send a message to the Lebanese populace: "don't give support to terrorists, or else." In other words, you do the dirty work of getting rid of Hezbollah, or you may be destroyed in the process for not having done so. The fact that many Lebanese may themselves feel threatened by Hezbollah is neglected. So that portion of the populace now faces the threat of a terror group with support in their midst, and violent attacks from beyond that really offer them nothing more than the threat of destruction or death. They don't appear to have any recourse.

When terrorist groups choose to embed themselves within civilian poulations, then they merely underscore the fact that they are terrorists. They "argue" an ideology of some sort (one which they rarely live by), and neglect the simple notion that it is human beings who hold ideologies to be true (or false). So groups like Hezbollah promote ideas that they actually don't even believe in, and are willing to sacrifice lives in the name of those idea. Of course, on the ground, it is far more complex than this.

The Isaeli government makes a point of wanting to fight terrorists to protect civilian populations and civil society. The irony is that in doing so, an excessive number of civilians (people threatened by terrorism) are being killed, and the infrastructure of civil society is being destroyed. To be more blunt, the cure is worse than the illness. Yes, only "hundreds" of civilians have been killed as compared to thousands. But all too sadly, such a statement makes these deaths appear to be both banal and acceptable. The number obscures the fact that a vast majority of those eliminated lives were unassociated with the conflict, and that there is not a good reason that can account for those lives being brought to an end, nor a statement or belief that can ever bring those lives back. These individuals are also the victims or terror, too. They cease to be people and become numbers.

 

[allabootmatt]

Edited to reply to Bizorky:

I think you make a good run-down of some of the complexities involved here. I don't mean to cheapen the deaths of civilians in Lebanon--God knows that if I had relatives there, I would be apoplectic right now, and I know that telling a grieving parent, for instance, that things aren't so bad since only hundreds died instead of thousands wouldn't assuage their grief by one iota.

Nor do I disagree with your point that Israel seems to be trying to scare the people of Lebanon into not supporting Hizbollah. That, of course, could backfire.

But where I disagree with you is on the cure being worse than the disease. It is not the responsibility of the Israeli government to be concerned with protecting Lebanese civilians, just as no Arab government bats an eye of concern for the welfare of Israeli civilians (quite the opposite, in fact). Israel's priority is to ensure the safety of its territory and people--territory which, in the case of the northern frontier, is entirely within internationally agreed boundaries except for parts of Shebaa Farms. The attitude of the Israelis seems to be that, now that in this region at least they are behind a permanent border, it needs to be made clear that any aggression across it, like, say, kidnapping two Israeli servicemen and killing eight inside of Israel, will be met with a ferocious response. That is the kind of mentality which evelves in a country that has been attacked by its neighbours on multiple occasions and almost destroyed by them on one of them. It is not fair to ask Israel to potentially mortage the security of its own citizens, both within the miltary and outside of it (although in a conscript army this distinction means little) for the sake of avoiding what is at the end of the day collateral damage, as repugnant as that term may be.

If anyone doubts that the deaths of civilians in Lebanon are accidental, I refer them to the best recent example in the Middle East of really, truly targeting civilians, which was by Syria, of course, in 1982, which killed as many as 25,000 people in one small city, Hama.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say that I am Jewish (or Jewie, as John Stewart would say), and have extensive family in Israel. At the same time, I was initially completely disgusted by the current Israeli actions in Lebanon, but have become more supportive of them as I have thought the situation through and learned more about it. I find it ridiculous that for many people in the West, dissaproval of Israel is so strong that they would lionize as "resistance" or "freedom fighters" the murderers of Hizbollah--at a recent 'peace' rally here in London, people waved signs saying "We Are Hizbollah." Is Israel using a heavy hand here? Absolutely. Is it too heavy? Maybe. But you can't lose sight of who, in cosmic terms, the good guys are. Israel is still a liberal democracy with equal rights for all its nationals--Alan Dershowitz, whom generally I'm not fond of, likes to say that he'll stop instinctively supporting Israel in Middle Eastern disputes when other countries in that region give their Muslim citizens the same rights that Israel does. I think it's a good point.

 

[spmarshall]

Maybe so the UN would vacate, and would no longer "observe" what's been going on.

Nontheless, it will serve as ammunition for the Israel-as-the-root-of-all-global-problems-and-sole-deserving-target-of-opprobrium brigade.

Holy hyperbole, Batman!

 

[unimaginative2]

It is not the responsibility of the Israeli government to be concerned with protecting Lebanese civilians, just as no Arab government bats an eye of concern for the welfare of Israeli civilians (quite the opposite, in fact).

Arab nations' lack of concern for Israeli civilians (and often even their own civilians) is terrible, but it is absolutely every warring government's responsibility to protect the civilians of an enemy nation as much as at all possible. It is absolutely at the foundation of modern notions of civilized warfare.

 

[allabootmatt]

I should have been more clear. I meant that it is not Israel's responsibility to put the welfare of Lebanese citizens above that of its own. Within the framework of doing what is necessary to destroy Hizbollah's capacity to kill Israelis, I agree, absolutely every step practicable should be taken to avoid Lebanese civilian casualties.

 

[andreapalladio]

What has the ruling party said about that so far? Zilch.

You'd think, at the very least, they'd call in the Israeli ambassador to explain his government's actions. If I recall correctly, we recalled our ambassador from Teheran when just one Canadian was murdered by the government there.

 

[spmarshall]

Apparently Steve, continuing the sudden pro-Bush, pro-Israel stance (from a more neutral one) wants to know why the post was manned - blaming the victim, or trying to deflect blame from Israel?

PM wants to know why UN post manned
Calls deadly attack 'terrible tragedy,' says he doubts Israel did it on purpose
Jul. 26, 2006. 05:23 PM
CANADIAN PRESS

HOPEWELL CAPE, N.B. — Prime Minister Stephen Harper says Israel’s deadly attack on a UN observation post in Lebanon, which claimed the life of a Canadian soldier, was a “terrible tragedy†and he doubts whether the bombing was deliberate.....

The prime minister also said he wants to know why the post was still manned even though it was in the middle of an obvious war zone.

 

[bizorky]

But where I disagree with you is on the cure being worse than the disease. It is not the responsibility of the Israeli government to be concerned with protecting Lebanese civilians, just as no Arab government bats an eye of concern for the welfare of Israeli civilians (quite the opposite, in fact). Israel's priority is to ensure the safety of its territory and people--

Yes, the Israeli government has a responsibility to protect the citizens of the nation. But does that mean being careless - even reckless - with the lives of citizens of other nations? If the cure to terrorism requires the deaths of ten civilians for every terrorist, then one can assume that it is the civilians who are paying the price. It is also civilians paying the greater price during the terrorist actions. So civilian poulations never come out ahead during this conflict: they die in the name of terrorism and die in the fight against terrorism. It all begins to boil down to nothing more than terror being excercised in the name of terror. In the long run nothing worthwhile is really achieved. That will be the legacy.

 

[ganjavih]

Crippling Lebanese infrastructure seems to be done with the intent to send a message to the Lebanese populace: "don't give support to terrorists, or else." In other words, you do the dirty work of getting rid of Hezbollah, or you may be destroyed in the process for not having done so.

State terrorism.