Is Israel Using Cluster Munitions On Urban Areas? (Updated)

By Cernig

 

(Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The Newshoggers has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this material nor is The Newshoggers endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The image above is captioned.in the London Times, as "Israeli artillery shells explode with a chemical agent designed to create smokescreen for ground forces." But last night the same picture was simply captioned as an artillery shell exploding over Gaza and other similiar images at AFP/Getty are similiarly captioned. One wonders why Murdoch's flagship newspaper decided to change the caption.

In two of those AFP/Getty images, here and here, you can clearly see impact explosions and fires begun by those impacts. Those are not chemical smoke shells. An ex-military officer friend tells me that the shells seen exploding in all these pictures are DPICM or Cluster Munition rounds. Identical cluster munitions were used in Lebanon by the IDF during the 2006 conflict and by both the UK and US during the invasion of Iraq. It's likely that the IDF are using US-made M483A1 DPICM artillery-delivered shells.

At the end of May, 111 nations including most NATO allies signed a treaty banning their stockpiling and use. neither the US nor Israel agreed to become signators. Although cluster bombs are not explicitly forbidden by the Geneva Law, the rules of war prohibit the use of inherently indiscriminate weapons or weapons that are incapable of being used in a manner that complies with the obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants. Those who use them in civilian areas therefore open themselves to charges of war crimes.

The impact of such indiscriminate tactics is immediate:

Eric Fosse, a Norwegian doctor there, said Hamas fighters were a small minority of the casualties brought in.

"This hospital has been filled up with patients," he added. This morning they [Israeli forces] bombed the fruit market. There were a large number of casualties.

"We became like a field hospital. There were two patients at a time in the operating rooms and we were operating on other people in the corridors. Some were dying before we could get to them."

Moawya Hasanian, the head of al-Shifa's emergency and ambulance department, said the hospital had taken in 33 dead and 137 wounded by lunchtime on Sunday.

Among those killed was an paramedic after his ambulance was hit by Israeli fire. Three of his colleagues were wounded.

"Only three of the dead are from Hamas, the rest are civilians," Hasanian said. "There are many children under 18. There are many in critical condition. We are working under pressure. It's not easy to work with bombs and air strikes everywhere. It's not easy for ambulances to move."

Which makes Israeli claims of there being no humanitarian crisis in Gaza ludicrous.

John Ging, the head of the UN relief agency in Gaza, described the situation there as "inhuman".

"We have a catastrophe unfolding in Gaza for the civilian population," he said. "The people of Gaza City and the north now have no water. That comes on top of having no electricity. They're trapped, they're traumatised, they're terrorised by this situation.

"They're in their homes. They're not safe. They're being killed and injured in large numbers, and they have no end in sight. The inhumanity of this situation, the lack of action to bring this to an end, is bewildering to them."

The UN has been particularly angered at the contention of the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Ging also accused Israel of a campaign of destroying public buildings vital to the administration and governance of Gaza.

"The whole infrastructure of the future state of Palestine is being destroyed," he said. "Blowing up the parliament building. That's the parliament of Palestine. That's not a Hamas building. The president's compound is for the president of Palestine. Schools, mosques."

This is collective punishment by design.

"When there was a siege, we kept taking about a catastrophe," said Hatem Shurrab, 24, of Gaza City. "But then the airstrikes started, and now we don't even know what word to use. There's no word in the dictionary that can describe the situation we are in."

Update: I've had another email from a colleague who says that the pictured shell bursts could be White Phosphorus rounds. That too, of course, would be an arguable violation of the Generva Conventions, given that in the two AFP/Getty pictures linked there are clear explosions on the ground linked to the shellburst's numerous smoke trails.

Update 2: More from Siun at FDL.

Update3: Haaretz confirms the IDF's use of cluster bombs but says they're being used over "open areas". Gaza is a lot smaller than Rhode island and cluster bombs have a pattern as big as a football field.

Update 4. The pictures definitely show white phosphorus rounds bursting over built-up civilian areas and causing fires. A nasty weapon in such circumstances.

White phosphorus bombs and shells are incendiary devices, but can also be used as an offensive anti-personnel flame compound capable of causing serious burns or death...White phosphorus weapons are controversial today because of their potential use against civilians. While the Chemical Weapons Convention does not designate WP as a chemical weapon, various unofficial groups consider it to be one. In recent years, the United States, Israel, Russia, and Argentina have used white phosphorus in combat.

...Incandescent particles of WP cast off by a WP weapon's initial explosion can produce extensive, deep (second and third degree), burns. Phosphorus burns carry a greater risk of mortality than other forms of burns due to the absorption of phosphorus into the body through the burned area, resulting in liver, heart and kidney damage, and in some cases multi-organ failure.^[23] These weapons are particularly dangerous to exposed people because white phosphorus continues to burn unless deprived of oxygen or until it is completely consumed.

The BBC has a slideshow. Here's the third photo.

Comments

[Jason]

Aren't unguided rockets fired intentionally into civilian towns by Hamas also "inherently indiscriminate weapons or weapons that are incapable of being used in a manner that complies with the obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants", Cernig?

Oh, wait. You only care about the laws of armed conflict when it is the U.S. or Israel accused of violating them, right? If not, why are those the ONLY times you comment about them????

[Steve Hynd]

Jason, go easy on the punctuation marks. They make you look unhinged. And in answer to your question about Hamas' rockets, the answer is quite obviously "yes".

However, 500 dead as opposed to four. The obvious question comes from the movie 'Night at the Museum' - "who's evolved?" Its a mistake to believe that descending to the tactics of terrorists can ever defeat them.

Regards, C

[Base]

Jason -

The fact of how Israel is using these weapons that the rest of the world (other than Israel and the US, in it's infinite wisdom) deems illegal seems to illustrate that Israel is not simply fighting against Hamas, but rather the entire population of Gaza. You can call it collective punishment, which is in and of itself a violation of the Geneva Convention; but that is clearly not nearly adequate to convey the level to which Israel is violating many international laws, as well as going far above any norm of 'just war'. This is butchery and not at all uncommon by Israel. They used massive amounts of cluster bombs and white phosphorous in Lebanon in 2006. This is odious, and even supporters of Israel should object to this.

[DR]

Jason:

By using the kind of logic the Israelis are using, Hamas would have the right to claim that they are NOT targeting civilians, but rather the IDF, since the IDF has members in pretty much every town and city in Israel. I wouldn't agree with such an argument, but neither do I accept it when the Israelis use it.

It's bs whichever side uses it.

And using WP munitions on civilians is chemical warfare according to U.N. definitions and statutes. Sorry, but that trumps a few small-yield missiles any time of the day in my book. Add to that an attack on a University for "symbolic" reasons (according to some), and Israel loses any moral high ground it might have had.

So no, I'm not defending Hamas. Hamas are a bunch of war criminals. But so are the Israelis. It's quite possible to have TWO bad guys in a fight...

[ofrmgfo]

Regarding "Update 3"
SO, just how many football fields would Rhode Island hold ?
How many Football fields would Gaza hold ?

Clusters are effective area denial weapons. Current inventory goes inert after a period of time from impact.

Now tell me, if your town was getting rocketed regularly, would you give a hoot about about some clusters or anything else being used on the people killing your friends , children, and countrymen ?

[One Fly]

take a look at the video in this post. It clearly shows secondary explosions.

LINK

[Steve Hynd]

Umm, yes ofrmglo. My country was regularly attacked by terrorists, called the IRA. I lost a good friend in one such attack. I deplore both their actions and some of the heavy-handed tactics used against them - but at least the UK never used WP airbursts over Dublin or Belfast. And now those same terrorists have put up their weapons to co-operate in governance...

Regards, C

PS "current inventory" has a 3-5% failure rate in self-destructing (not "going inert" even when they work right - just blowing up late).

[Anon]

Video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVY4NUKowzg

[One Fly]

It's white phosphorous.

[Peter G.]

Hello Cernig
The last line of your first comment is one with which I heartily concur. It is a mistake to use terrorist tactics to fight terrorism. At he risk of sounding heartless I must also say that the ratios of civilian dead to Hamas dead cited in your link do not support an accusation of collective punishment by design. On the contrary, given the population density of Gaza it is rather miraculous that more civilians have not been killed. It is pretty hard to evaluate what type of munitions are being used in the picture. Too bad it isn't a video. The fact that the sub-munitions are glowing means that they are either Willy Pete or smoke bombs as the Israelis claim. In either case there wouldn't be impact explosions unless they were hitting something like an ammunition dump that generated secondary explosions. They are definitely not cluster bombs. Any idea if someone has got a video available?

[Peter G.]

Found the video. I'd say anon is right . It probably is white phosphorous. This is not a chemical weapon however. It is an incendiary. I'm not sure whoever was on the receiving end would appreciate the distinction though.

[Bing]

If they were phosphorous, everything beneath them would be burning. Nasty stuff that.

As for a clusterbomb, I don't think we can tell from the photos. Indeed, it seems to me that it could easily be a system for rapid delivery of smoke. The charges that seem to be going off may be delivering smoke over a wide area. Sure seems to be working.

But not phosphorus.

[Bing]

If those were High Explosive secondary explosions, you would have seen the shockwaves generated by the blasts. That's a crap video and horrible evidence for clusterbombs and does not bear out the effects of burning phosphorous, instant, steel-penetrating, bigass fires. The body count alone (which is a disgrace from which Israel may not recover) does not bear out burning clouds of phosphorous or thermite. We would be seeing a firestorm. That's how Dresden was lit up in WWII: a bombing raid to produce lots of kindling and an incendiary raid to spark fires. We're not seeing that. It would be obvious since firestorms have their own weather systems. Don't let your imaginations get away from you.

Everything that Israel is doing is questionable and suspect, but this is not the systematic firing of the Gaza Strip. Where are the reports of thermite or other strictly incendiary casualties?

HJ

[gfmucci]

Aren't unguided rockets fired intentionally into civilian towns by Hamas also "inherently indiscriminate weapons or weapons that are incapable of being used in a manner that complies with the obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants" Cernig

Oh wait You only care about the laws of armed conflict when it is the U.S. or Israel accused of violating them right If not why are those the ONLY times you comment about them

Look - hardly any punctuation so I am not unhinged just pointing out your double standard Historically people with better weapons win wars despite the other side playing the innocent card and despite their inhumane terrorist tactics lies and fascist methods

oh well

[Steve Hynd]

gfmucci, did you read my reply? I said "yes". Hamas rocket attacks are also war crimes.

Regards, C

[LS]

It is definitely not your old fashioned cluster munitions. They don't leave a smoke trail.

BTW when you pick on the 800 pound gorilla in the room, don't act surprised when you are pummeled worse than your giving. I would have to wonder what was going through the minds of Hamas leaders when they decided to cut off the cease fire and send indiscriminate rockets into Isreal. Could they have been trying to provoke this type of reaction?

While I consider each life priceless thereby making a dozen lives as valuable as a hundred, other cultures have a different assessment. I would venture a guess that Hamas and Hezbollah don't value life as highly as Israel (suicide murderers may be a clue). Is it possible that Hamas actually welcomes this incursion and feels the loss of life is worth the political stigmatization of Israel?

[Jack]

Eric Fosse, a Norwegian doctor there, said Hamas fighters were a small minority of the casualties brought in.

And of course the doctor has a roster of all of the members of Hamas so that he can verify who is or isn't a member.

[Steve Hynd]

I think being a woman, child or old man might be a dead giveaway, Jack.

[Mike]

Sorry if this sounds naive, but why would Israel fire cluster rounds into an area their infantry will most likely be going through?

Also, when you quote the number of dead on each side, it merely shows that the Israelis have invested a lot of resources into protecting their civilians while Hamas has not. In fact, many news outlets have mentioned the numerous tunnels and bunkers Hamas fighters are hiding in, which leads me to wonder why they didn't invest their "limited resources" in building similar shelters for their women and children. It just shows how much each society values the lives of their citizens.

Lastly, the low Israeli casualty figures aren't from Hamas' lack of trying. They'd be jubilant if they killed more Israelis. Remember, that is their stated reason for being!

[Nawlins]

Update 6:

GENEVA – The international Red Cross said Tuesday that Israel has fired white phosphorus shells in its offensive in the Gaza Strip, but has no evidence to suggest it is being used improperly or illegally.

.....

In some of the strikes in Gaza it's pretty clear that phosphorus was used," Herby told The Associated Press. "But it's not very unusual to use phosphorus to create smoke or illuminate a target. We have no evidence to suggest it's being used in any other way.

[Philip I]

The world should listen to this wise Israeli