[Institute for Contemporary Affairs/Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs] Dr. Avi Bell - It is legal for armed forces to make mistakes. It is not a war crime if after the fact one turns out to be wrong in believing that a house contains a combatant. If, as is inevitable, Israel made occasional mistakes in targeting, that is not a war crime. The question of intent is crucial. If a belligerent attacks what it believes is a legitimate target, and it turns out after the fact that only civilians were killed, there is no war crime. Hizballah committed war crimes in the recent war that far exceed in gravity and quantity all those Israel is accused of. Hizballah launched thousands of rocket and mortar attacks on northern Israel, deliberately targeting civilians in violation of the laws of war. Hizballah still holds two Israeli prisoners of war incommunicado, without permitting access to the Red Cross, in violation of the laws of prisoners of war in the Third Geneva Convention. Hizballah combatants dressed as protected civilians, thereby committing illegal acts of perfidy. They carried out military operations from civilian areas in order to use protected persons as shields, another violation of the laws of war. Under the laws of war, if a residential home serves as a base or a hiding place for combatants or a storehouse for weaponry, it is a legitimate military target. Thus, if one sees a residential home bombed, or even fifty bombed homes, this is not evidence per se of a war crime. French President Jacques Chirac claimed that Israel's counterstrike on Lebanon was "totally disproportionate" to Hizballah's attack on Israel. Yet such a claim has no basis in international law. When states act in self-defense, in response to an armed attack, they may use as much force as necessary to achieve the military objective. Thus the U.S. could use as much force as it needed in order to topple the regime in Afghanistan; it did not need to limit itself to the amount of force used by al-Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks. The writer, of the Faculty of Law at Bar-Ilan University, is currently a visiting professor at Fordham Law School. He specializes in international law, particularly the laws of war.
2006-11-09 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive