Deadly harvest: The Lebanese fields sown with cluster bombs

[cal04]

Lebanese villagers must risk death in fields 'flooded' with more than a million Israeli cluster bombs - or leave crops to rot
By Patrick Cockburn in Nabatiyeh
The war in Lebanon has not ended. Every day, some of the million bomblets which were fired by Israeli artillery during the last three days of the conflict kill four people in southern Lebanon and wound many more.

The casualty figures will rise sharply in the next month as villagers begin the harvest, picking olives from trees whose leaves and branches hide bombs that explode at the smallest movement. Lebanon's farmers are caught in a deadly dilemma: to risk the harvest, or to leave the produce on which they depend to rot in the fields.

In a coma in a hospital bed in Nabatiyeh lies Hussein Ali Ahmad, a 70-year-old man from the village of Yohmor. He was pruning an orange tree outside his house last week when he dislodged a bomblet; it exploded, sending pieces of shrapnel into his brain, lungs and kidneys. "I know he can hear me because he squeezes my hand when I talk to him," said his daughter, Suwad, as she sat beside her father's bed in the hospital.

(snip)
Some Israeli officers are protesting at the use of cluster bombs, each containing 644 small but lethal bomblets, against civilian targets in Lebanon. A commander in the MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems) unit told the Israeli daily Haaretz that the army had fired 1,800 cluster rockets, spraying 1.2 million bomblets over houses and fields. "In Lebanon, we covered entire villages with cluster bombs," he said. "What we did there was crazy and monstrous." What makes the cluster bombs so dangerous is that 30 per cent of the bomblets do not detonate on impact. They can lie for years - often difficult to see because of their small size, on roofs, in gardens, in trees, beside roads or in rubbish - waiting to explode when disturbed.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1616665.ece

[aquart]

1. So if they hadn't let a terrorist military organization occupy their lands

their lands might still be useful instead of deadly?

But this is Israel's fault and not weak pathetic client-state Lebanon's which gave over military control to a paramilitary organization with no affiliation to a government.......oh, wait. That's not true. They seem to have money to burn and since they have no tax power.......just who is paying their bills? Who decided Lebanon was a nice place to house this deadly parasite?

But please continue to blame Israel. Bad Israel. Good Hezbullah. Really competent Lebanon.

[breakaleg]

3. What kind of twisted logic is this? Isreal dropped the bombs.

You can spin it any way you like and it won't change the facts.

[Tom Joad]

5. Yes, the terrorist military used Cluster bombs, and we should end

the transfer of weaponery to this terrorist military organization, as most of the world's people sees the Israeli military.

[rrasile]

2. the use of cluster bombs

Now the killing begins. A nation of God and their government does this.
Oh what the hell, the United States does the same thing. Why in the fuck didn't we spread some around Iraq. Did someone forget or did they believe it was going to be a slam dunk.

[Tom Joad]

4. The US has used illegal weapons in Iraq, The US is also responsible for

the use of its Cluster bombs in Israel (sent to Israel, special delivery). The US has laws regarding the use of its weapons, and this should be investigated. I think if these weapons were used illegally (and every indications says that they were, including Israeli Battillion chiefs who said the whole thing was monstorous) then such weapons sales must be halted... not only for moral purposes, but to uphold US law.

For an article on cluster bombs in Iraq. see
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-12-10-cluster-bomb-cover_x.htm

[Englander]

6. Comment from the Indy;

It's time to outlaw these ruthless killers
Published: 18 September 2006

I was in Lebanon in July 2005 on a trip to document the residual problem from cluster bombs used in 1978 and 1982. Unexploded cluster munitions were still claiming lives more than two decades after that conflict. I recently returned from another trip to Lebanon where I saw that a whole new wave of devastation from cluster bombs is beginning.

The use of cluster munitions in Lebanon was an outrage. It was known before they were used that they would kill and injure civilians in populated areas because of their inaccurate dispersal pattern. It was known that cluster munitions would leave hundreds of their submunitions unexploded to terrorise civilians returning to rebuild their lives.

With a ceasefire in sight, Israel launched millions of cluster bomblets throughout towns and villages in the last 72 hours of the war. The mounting toll of civilian deaths and injuries and the deadly unexploded ordnance contamination that will blight Lebanon for years to come were all predictable, foreseeable and preventable.

Most of the submunitions used in Lebanon look like torch batteries with ribbons and others look like tennis balls. They are a deadly attraction for children who make up about 30 per cent of the casualties.

What can be done about the cluster bomb infested fields of south Lebanon? While we cannot reverse the consequences of Israel's use of cluster munitions, we can work to prevent use of the weapon in future conflicts. Pressure to this end from civil society groups has been growing through the international Cluster Munition Coalition that now has more than 170 member groups, such as Human Rights Watch in the US, Handicap International in France and Europe and Landmine Action in the UK. Despite opposition within governments to a new law, campaigners against cluster bombs have begun to show results.

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1616667.ece