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Various groups and individuals, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and United Nations officials, have accused Israel, Hezbollah, or both, of violations of international humanitarian law during the 2006 Lebanon War, and warned of possible war crimes.^[1] These allegations included intentional attacks on civilian populations or infrastructure, disproportionate or indiscriminate attacks, the use of human shields, and the use of prohibited weapons.

Under international humanitarian law, warring parties are obliged to distinguish between combatants and civilians, ensure that attacks on legitimate military targets are proportional, and guarantee that the military advantage of such attacks outweigh the possible harm done to civilians.^[2] Violations of these laws are considered war crimes.

Intentional attacks on civilians

One of the most controversial aspects of the conflict has been the high number of civilian casualties.

Amnesty International called on Hezbollah to end its attacks on civilians, and for Israel to end its attacks against both civilians and civilian objects.^[3] Human Rights Watch condemned both Israel^[4] and Hezbollah^[2] for failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians in attacks, violating the principle of distinction, and accused both of committing war crimes.^[5][6] UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said Israel's response violated international humanitarian law, but also criticized Hezbollah for knowingly putting civilians in harm's way by "cowardly blending...among women and children".^[7] During the war, Israeli jets distributed leaflets calling on civilian residents to evacuate or move north.^[8]

In response to some of this criticism, Israel says that it tried to avoid civilians, but that Hezbollah fired from civilian areas, itself a war crime, which made those areas legitimate targets.^[9] Human Rights Watch found no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack.^[10]

ITIC response

Responding to critics, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies, a private research group headed by Reuven Erlich, a retired IDF colonel, organized a team of military intelligence experts and compiled a report in conjunction with lawyers from the Israeli army and Foreign Ministry. The 300-page report includes declassified photographs, documents, video images and prisoner interrogations and was translated by the American Jewish Congress who passed it to the New York Times, which had it published. It says that Hezbollah operated from civilian areas to deter the IDF and gain a propaganda advantage. The report also says that Hezbollah has been preparing for such an engagement for years, embedding its fighters and their weapons in the Shiite villages of southern Lebanon. Some cases the report documents include:

• Guerrillas stashing weapons in hundreds of private homes and mosques, having fighters transporting missiles closely follow ambulances, and firing rockets near UN monitoring posts.
• Hezbollah bases, weapons and ammunition stores hidden within civilian population centers in south Beirut, southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.
• A truck with a multi-barreled missile launcher, presumably from Hezbollah, parking in a street, sandwiched between residential buildings
• In a Lebanese village, rockets are seen being fired from a launcher on the back of a truck. The truck then drives a short distance and disappears inside a building.
• Lebanese residents' comments of the activities of Hezbollah within civilian communities
• Interrogations with Muhammad Srour, a young Hezbollah fighter, revealed:
  • He had initially received training in Iran and was undergoing further training in eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley when the war broke out.
  • While transporting missiles, hidden in cloth, in and around a Lebanese village, he held a white flag.
• Hussein Suleiman, a Hezbollah fighter, explains how he had set up a rocket-firing position on the front porch of a house on the outskirts of a Lebanese town.
• Maher Kourani, a Hezbollah fighter, said group members had worn civilian clothes, tried never to show their weapons, and traveled in ordinary civilian cars.

Other than two villages, Erlich said that over all, Hezbollah did not coerce Lebanese villagers from leaving. He says instead that “Hezbollah was operating inside a supportive population, and cynically used them to further its own goals.”^[11]

In Lebanon, a Hezbollah official denied the study’s allegations, saying its military units were based outside towns and villages and had come into populated areas only when circumstances required it. “We tried to avoid having to fight among civilian areas, but when Israeli troops entered villages, we were automatically forced to fight them from inside these villages to defend it,” said the official.^[9]

Intentional attacks on civilian objects

Direct attacks on civilian objects are prohibited under international humanitarian law.^[12] The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) initially estimated about 35,000 homes and businesses in Lebanon were destroyed by Israel in the conflict, while a quarter of the country's road bridges or overpasses were damaged. Jean Fabre, a UNDP spokesman, estimated that overall economic losses for Lebanon from the month-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah totaled "at least $15 billion, if not more."^[13]

Amnesty International published a report identifying evidence of the destruction of entire civilian neighbourhoods and villages by Israeli forces, attacks on bridges with no strategic value, and attacks on civilian infrastructure indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.^[14] It stated that "the widespread destruction of apartments, houses, electricity and water services, roads, bridges, factories and ports, in addition to several statements by Israeli officials, suggests a policy of punishing both the Lebanese government and the civilian population," and called for an international investigation of violations of international humanitarian law by both sides in the conflict.^[12]

Israel defends itself from such allegations on the grounds that Hezbollah's use of roads and bridges for military purposes made them legitimate targets. An Israeli report defended stated that "airstrikes and ground attacks against Hezbollah targets located in population centers were carried out in accordance with international law, which does not grant immunity to a terrorist organization deliberately hiding behind civilians." Amnesty International identifies Hezbollah as "a guerrilla group based among the civilian population," and notes the challenges faced when fighting them, including "identifying and destroying weapons located in civilian houses while minimizing harm to civilians." ^[12][15] However, Amnesty International stated that "the military advantage anticipated from destroying [civilian infrastructure] must be measured against the likely effect on civilians."^[12]

Use of human shields

Israeli officials accused Hezbollah of intentionally using the civilian population as human shields, and several reports have alleged that Hezbollah fired rockets from residential areas to draw Israeli fire on those areas, which maximised civilian casualties.^[16][17] The IDF released pictures and videos it said demonstrated Hezbollah's use of mosques and homes for rocket storage and launching.^[18] The IDF claimed that Hezbollah had set up roadblocks to prevent residents from leaving the warzone,^[19] while Amnesty International reported that "around 100,000 civilians were trapped in southern Lebanon, afraid to flee following Israeli threats to target all moving vehicles," and after statements by Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon that "all those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah."^[12]

Amnesty International investigated Israeli complaints of the use of human shields by Hezbollah, but found no evidence for the claims. They concluded that "it [was] not apparent that civilians were present and used as 'human shields'."^[20] A statement issued by Human Rights Watch supported Amnesty's conclusion and "found no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack." ^[21]

Human Rights Watch stated that "while it may be unlawful... to place forces, weapons and ammunition within or near densely populated areas, it is only shielding when there is a specific intent to use the civilians to deter an attack."^[22] After his mission to coordinate aid efforts in Lebanon, U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland stated that "Hizbullah must stop this cowardly blending... among women and children," and that "I heard they were proud because they lost very few fighters and that it was the civilians bearing the brunt of this. I don't think anyone should be proud of having many more children and women dead than armed men."^[23]

A September 6, 2007 Human Rights Watch report found that most of the civilian deaths in Lebanon resulted from "indiscriminate Israeli airstrikes," and found that Israeli aircraft targeted vehicles carrying fleeing civilians.^[24] The report stated that the investigation "refutes the argument made by Israeli officials that most of the Lebanese civilian casualties were due to Hezbollah routinely hiding among civilians."^[24] In a statement issued before the report's release, the human rights organization said there was no basis to the Israeli government's claim that civilian casualties resulted from Hezbollah guerrillas using civilians as shields. Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch executive director, said there were only "rare" cases of Hezbollah operating in civilian villages. "To the contrary, once the war started, most Hezbollah military officials and even many political officials left the villages," he said. "Most Hezbollah military activity was conducted from prepared positions outside Lebanese villages in the hills and valleys around."^[25]

A car in Haifa following rocket attack on 17 July 2006 showing result of anti-personnel shrapnel. Such attacks killed 43 Israeli civilians and injured 4,262 others.

Use of prohibited weapons

Human Rights Watch strongly criticized Hezbollah's use of unguided Katyusha rockets, and Israel's use of unreliable cluster bombs – both too close to civilians areas, suggesting that they may have gone as far as deliberately targeting civilians with such munitions.^[2][26] Regarding Hezbollah, they reiterated a 1997 report, which stated that "Katyushas are inaccurate weapons with an indiscriminate effect when fired into areas where civilians are concentrated." Such rockets had been fired into civilian areas, in some cases with "metal ball bearings inside the rockets... designed to maximize the lethal effect."^[6][27][28] They consider the use of Katyusha rockets in civilian areas to be a war crime.^[22] Regarding Israeli cluster bomb strikes, they stated that "towns and villages [in Lebanon]... were apparently deliberately targeted," and noted the "particularly heavy use in the final days prior to the cease-fire."^[26] The Israeli army defended its use of cluster munitions, stating that they were "legal under internaional law" and employed "in accordance with international standards."^[29]

Amnesty International alleged that the IDF used white phosphorus shells in Lebanon.^[30][31] On 22 October 2006, Israel admitted to the use of white phosphorus, but stated that it used the incendiary "according to the rules of international law."^[32][33][34]

"Uranium bomb" allegation

In 2006, following the publication of a report by Dr Chris Busby, the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, The Independent ran a front page article by Robert Fisk under the headline Mystery of Israel's secret uranium bomb which discussed whether Israel held "uranium-based munitions" and had used them during the 2006 Lebanon War .^[35] The Busby report said that two samples of soil thrown up by Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed "elevated radiation signatures". These had been sent for further study to the Harwell laboratory for mass spectrometry in Oxfordshire, which had confirmed the concentration of uranium isotopes found in the samples.^[35] Subsequently, the United Nations Environment Programme jointly investigated whether Israel had used weapons containing either isotopes of elements such as uranium or white phosphorus. Twenty UN experts, working with Lebanese environmentalists, spent two weeks assessing various samples.^[36] The finding of that investigation did not support that of the earlier one by Busby. It was reported that no evidence was found that Israel used depleted uranium, enriched uranium or any other radioactive material in bombs dropped on Lebanon.^[36] After the findings of the United Nations investigation were reported, the United Kingdom site of thepro-Israel advocacy group HonestReporting attacked Robert Fisk for "failure to acknowledge the political agenda" of the authors of the report he had based his article on, authors who held no expertise in nuclear physics.^[37] A demand for retraction was issued by the Anti-Defamation League citing the story to be "unfairly tarnish[ing] the reputation of Israel's men and women in uniform".^[38][39] When the Independent did not retract, a complaint was made to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) The complaint was rejected.^[40]

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