HEZBOLLAH ROCKETS REPORT

by RAY FLEMING
ON August 24 in this space I commented on a report by Amnesty International about Israel's military action against Lebanon that was severely critical of Israel's strikes on civilian buildings and structures which, it said, went beyond ”collateral damage” and amounted to ”indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks under the Geneva conventions on the laws of war.” More than one thousand Lebanese were killed in these attacks and almost a million displaced; there were more than 7'000 Israeli airstrikes. PP Yesterday Amnesty International issued a report on Hezbollah's use of rockets to attack Israel. This said that these attacks were ”serious violations of international humanitarian law” and included ”deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects”. During the military action Hezbollah fired Katyushka 3'970 rockets into Israel. The report says: ”Katyushka rockets cannot be aimed with accuracy, especially at long distances, and are therefore indiscriminate.” The rockets killed 43 civilians and twelve Israeli soldiers. This second report apparently makes no specific reference to breach of Geneva conventions by Hezbollah.
In both cases my comments are based on press accounts of the Amnesty International reports. The secretary general of the organisation, Irene Khan, told the New York Times that the two reports ”don't cancel each other out; they show both sides of the violence that took place because the story needs to be the story about the victims on both sides”. Ms Khan repeated an earlier call she had made for a United Nations inquiry into the war.