Flooding South Lebanon - Human Rights Watch

Israel’s Use of Cluster Munitions and International Humanitarian
Law
In south Lebanon in 2006, Israel employed a means of warfare that was likely to
cause significant harm to civilians—unreliable and inaccurate submunitions used
widely and heavily in populated areas. Despite ample past experience of the deadly
effects of cluster duds on the civilian population of south Lebanon, awareness of the
impending end of the war, and the knowledge that there would be a legacy of
unexploded duds creating de facto minefields, the IDF did not refrain from launching
these attacks or choose alternative means that would be less harmful to civilians.
As described in this report, Human Rights Watch found submunitions in houses,
schools, businesses, and municipal centers—all areas frequented by civilians. In
many cases, cluster strikes occurred in areas where we found no evidence of
Hezbollah rocket launchers, fighters, or other military objectives. The post-ceasefire
casualties have to our knowledge all been civilians or deminers, and civilian access
to agricultural areas and property has been severely affected. The aftereffects of
Israel’s cluster strikes were foreseeable by the IDF and should have been taken into
account when assessing the likely civilian impact of planned attacks—the estimated
hundreds of thousands and possibly up to one million submunition duds on the
ground in south Lebanon do not differentiate between soldiers and civilians when
they unexpectedly explode. These factors all tend to establish that Israel’s use of
submunitions violated the IHL requirement of distinction between civilians and
military targets.
Neither Human Rights Watch’s research nor the limited information offered by the IDF
provides affirmative evidence that Israel’s cluster attacks had potential military
advantage greater than the significant and ongoing harm that they caused. The
paucity of evidence of specific military objectives, the known dangers of cluster
munitions, the timing of large-scale attacks days before an anticipated ceasefire,
and the massive scope of the attacks themselves lead to the conclusion that the
attacks were of an indiscriminate and disproportionate character, in violation of
international humanitarian law. If they were launched in knowledge or reckless
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