Final verdict of the The International Citizens' Tribunal on Lebanon
INTERNATIONAL CITIZENS'
TRIBUNAL ON LEBANON
PROCEEDINGS
(2008)
Promoted by Lebanese Civil Society against
Israel for the acts carried out during the war of July 12-August 24, 2006
and for the damages to the Lebanese nation caused by
Israel
Brussels February 22-23-24, 2008
International Association Center
JURY
Lilia Solano
(President), Adolfo Ascabal, Claudio Moffa (Reporter), Rajindar
Sachar
FINAL
VERDICT
GIVEN
that the Lebanese Civil Society, through their
organizations and representatives, has named an international jury as a court
independent of any State, to judge the acts carried out by Israel during the
war of July-August 2006 according to international law and in particular the
Charter of the United Nations, the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and the
Statute of the International Criminal Court of 1998;
that Lebanese Civil Society has also named as the
lawyers representing them: Issam Naaman, Albert Fahrat, Hassan Jouny, Mohamed
Tay and at the same time sent a formal request to Israel, the accused party, to
name its defense attorney;
that in the days of February 22-23-24, 2008, the Jury,
that is, Lilia Solano (Columbia), Adolfo Ascabal (Cuba),
Claudio Moffa (Italy), Rajindar Sachar (India) met, in establishing as a
preliminary step its competence ratione materiae, loci and
temporis: materiae, the acts carried out by the Israeli army
during the war against Lebanon; loci, the Lebanese territory occupied
or bombarded by the Israeli army; temporis, with reference to the acts
carried out during the time period starting from July 12, 2006, date of the
beginning of the war, to August 24, 2006, the date of ceasefire;
that immediately after this the Jury met and named as
its President Prof. Lilia Solano and Claudio Moffa as its Reporter;
that Friday February 22 at 9 p.m. the Jury opened the
proceedings, by communicating to the involved parties its jurisdictional
competence and the ethical goals of what would from then on make up the
International Citizens’ Tribunal for Lebanon;
that on Saturday, February 23, the Jury:
- in its first act acknowledged the absence of both the
representatives of Israel and their legal defense;
- listened to the Bill of Indictment against the
defendants pronounced by lawyers of the victims of the war and of Lebanese
Civil Society containing the charges against Israel for war crimes and crimes
against humanity, and acquiring the text for the recording of the
proceedings;
- listened to the first series of witnesses in the
order of the list presented in the appendix, allowing the plaintiffs’
attorneys to ask them questions, and also themselves posing questions and
acquiring any possible documentation and evidence presented during the
testimony for the recording of the proceedings and attached to this
Verdict;
that on Sunday, February 24, the Jury heard, according
to an identical procedure, the final witnesses and the experts, and concluded
the discussion at 1 p.m. with a declaration by the President Lilia Solano;
IN CONSIDERATION
OF
1. FACTS
On July 12, 2006 the Israeli Armed Forces invaded
Lebanon, by crossing the “Blue Line” established in 1982 by UNIFIL
to demarcate the territories under the regular jurisdiction of the government
of Beirut, and the territories occupied by Israel during the invasion that year
(1982);
The Israeli authorities justified the outbreak of this
aggression by calling it a “reprisal” for the capture of two of its
soldiers, which had taken place in the territory under its control by irregular
Lebanese forces, which for an extended period of time had been operating in the
south of the country in order to restore, beyond the Blue Line, the full
sovereignty of Lebanon over the territories still under foreign occupation.
The “reprisals” in reality quickly took the
form of a land invasion on the part of the Israeli army, and then, after the
strong resistance of the voluntary Lebanese Armed Forces operating in proximity
of the border, of an aggression of great breadth by aerial bombardments, not
only on the frontier areas or of the south, but even in the Beqaa Valley and
the most densely populated districts of Beirut.
The testimonies and documentation collected during the
hearings, while confirming what was found by the UN Investigative Commission of
November 2006, was able to verify that during the war which took place from
July 12, 2006, to August 24, 2006, Israeli invasion forces:
- carried out nearly 7,000 air raids on a territory -
that except for some planes and a small fleet of helicopters - was
substantially without air defense;
- killed more than 1,100 people, among whom were many
children, women, and elderly persons;
- bombarded, with a regularity that leaves no doubts
about the intentional nature of the attacks, most of the infrastructures of the
country, such as roads, bridges, airports, reservoirs of potable water, power
stations, fuel deposits, as well as land for agriculture and raising
livestock;
- bombarded civilian dwellings, hospitals, and
nonmilitary columns of civilian cars trying to escape, with the clear goal of
killing the greatest number of civilians possible;
- bombarded museums, religious places and religious
ceremonies, including a funeral procession for a victim of one of the air
raids;
- bombarded small supermarkets in small villages;
- attacked villages and districts without military
defenses and carried out acts of collective punishment and reprisals against
civilians in the occupied zones;
- attacked Lebanese medical and health-care personnel
as these personnel were aiding the civilian population in emergency rescue;
- used, during these bombardments, with the aim of
causing immediate or time-delayed damage to the civilian population, including
children, the following prohibited weapons: toy bombs, cluster bombs, helium
bombs and according to the deposition turned over by one of the witnesses,
bombs with depleted uranium: on this last type of bomb the opinion of the
experts is not unanimous, because the verification and surveys by Geiger
counter conducted by the witness himself and his team of technicians were
checked neither by the Investigative Commission of the United Nations of
September-October 2006 – which had instead checked the use of all other
types of bombs - nor by the investigation carried out during the same time by
the Association of American Jurists;
Nevertheless, all the acts cited above, because of
their regularity, constancy and continuity, provide evidence that the civilian
population constituted the principal if not exclusive target of the Israeli
attacks;
The testimonies and documentation acquired during the
discussions were also able to verify the approximate but in all cases
considerable extent of the damages--both immediate and time-delayed--of a
personal, economic, environmental and psychological character that the Lebanese
people experienced because of the Israeli acts of war:
A) Human damages:
- following massive bombardments, more than 1,100
people died, including hundreds of children, women, and elderly persons;
approximately 4,350 were wounded, dozens of them permanently disabled, with
losses also to their ability to work or carry out their profession;
- destruction of thousands of dwellings, as attested by
UNIFIL in the following villages: Taïbeh, 80% of the civilian homes
destroyed; Markaba, 50%; Qantara 50%; Maïs-el-Jabal 30%; Houla 20%; Talloussa 15%; Ghandourieh
80%; Zibqin 60%; Jibal-el-botm 50%; el-Bayadah 50%; Bayt-Lif 30%; Kafra
20%;
- clouds of polymer hydrocarbons, of dioxin and other
carcinogenic particles that can cause respiratory and hormonal disorders
(following the bombardment of the power station of Jiyyeh).
- dissemination of chemicals as well as chlorine in the
atmosphere, which is capable of affecting the health of almost two million
people, following bombardments of glassmaking, foodstuffs and plastics
factories;
- besides these figures and the above-mentioned precise
data, the fact that stands out in all the documentation and testimony made
during the hearings, it is the regularity, constancy and continuity with which
the Israeli armed forces targeted the civilian population as such and the
country's civilian infrastructure, either in the course of the specific
episodes referred to by the witnesses, or in the course of attacks on the
civilian convoys, among them the two following examples, which, repeated in the
Bill of Indictment and then verified during the hearings, are perhaps the most
explicatory regarding the sadistic and terrorist nature of the war unleashed by
the Israeli army:
-
The first: “On July 16, authorization was given
to a convoy of the UNIFIL - made up of 4 buses, 7 trucks, 2 of which were
armored and 2 military police vehicles to leave Naqoura at 7:15 a.m., scheduled
to reach Marwaheen at 9:00 a.m. At 11:00 a.m., the local population, which
wanted to evacuate, was ready and the UNIFIL of Naqoura had approved the
additional evacuation of the inhabitants of the village of Um Al Tut, close to
Marwaheen. At the hour of 11:15 a.m., once the convoy reached the UNIFIL
military observation post, the convoy was informed that the authorization to
evacuate the civilians had been cancelled. It was suggested that the convoy
return to Marwaheen. Toward 2:00 p.m., UNIFIL obtained a new authorization from
the Israeli military personnel in charge. As the first vehicle reached a house
located in the street leading to the mosque, a smoke screen rocket fell on the
roof of this house, ricocheting and falling right in front of the vehicle. The
civilians left the vehicles and gathered on the central square of the village.
An emissary was sent to ask for an immediate end to the attack. But a second
attack took place, and 6 other smoke-screen rockets hit the same house. Towards
5:30 p.m., the convoy finally could set out again toward Tyre. The attack was
intended to sow panic and terror among the civil population.”;
-
The second: “On August 11, 2006, approximately
600 vehicles left the village of Marjayoun - occupied since August 10, 2006 -
in the direction of the Beqaa Valley. Towards 3:30 p.m., the convoy - including
the patients and medical personnel of the hospital--had left the village to
reach the eastern part of the Beqaa Valley towards 9:30 p.m. Until it reached
Hasbaya, the convoy was escorted and surrounded by 2 armored UNIFIL vehicles.
Towards 10:00 p.m., fifteen vehicles were hit by the bombardments of the
Israeli army, causing the death of eight people, among them an engineer from
the hospital and a volunteer of the Lebanese Red Cross who had tried to assist
one of the wounded people. During this time, another attack took place on
Marwaheen. However, as of July 15, UNIFIL had obtained the authorization of the
Israeli military personnel in charge to carry out the evacuation of the
civilian population. The Israeli Armed Forces attacked this convoy
intentionally with the knowledge that it was not a military target. This means
it was an attack that ignored the principle of distinguishing between military
targets and civilian targets.”
B) Economic damage:
- to the food industry, following the total destruction
of “Liban Lait” in Baalbek, the dairy company – and
its derived products - the largest in the country, which produced approximately
90% of the Lebanese production of pasteurized milk;
- to industry in general with the total or partial
destruction of at least 29 other factories, while eliminating approximately 5%
of the Lebanese industrial sector, and inflicting other important damages to
more than 700 industrial companies (including the Maliban glassmaking
enterprise in Beqaa; the Safieddin pharmaceutical factory in Bazouriye, in the
south of Lebanon; the Fine paper tissues factory in Kafr Jara, near Saïda;
the Moussaoui building material company, near Baalbek; the Dalal factory
(prefabricated houses);
- to tourism and the fishing industry, with a value of
many millions of dollars following the bombardment of the power station of
Jiyyeh;
- to civilian transportation, as in the case of 450
trucks attacked on the roads of Lebanon;
- to the civil infrastructure: port (destruction of
radar for civilian navigation) and airport (runways and fuel tanks) of Beirut;
137 roads; 109 bridges including the Quasmieh bridge, a vital connection
between Tyre and Saïda; the Zahrani bridge, which connects southern
Lebanon with Mount-Lebanon and Beirut; the Mdeirej bridge connecting Beqaa with
Mount-Lebanon and Beirut; the Madfoun bridge connecting northern Lebanon with
Mount-Lebanon and Beirut; the Mouamaltaïn bridge connecting Jbeil and
northern Lebanon with Beirut; all the bridges of Beqaa and especially the
bridge of el-Assi (over the Oronte) connecting Caza d'el-Hermel with the
rest of Lebanon;
Is to be stressed that often, as in the case of the
Qana bridge, which was used only in the passing of the of sheep farmers and
which did not have any military relevance, the destruction of the bridges
prevented the population from escaping the war zone;
C) Social damage
The economic damage has in turn provoked a social
crisis, represented by major a growing vulnerability of the middle class and by
the impoverishment of the groups of society that are already the most
vulnerable. Unemployment has increased up to 15%, compared with the 8% level of
2004. Inflation has quadrupled.
D) Environmental damage:
- following the bombardment of the power station of
Jiyyeh (25 kilometers south of Beirut) and of its fuel deposits: a fire that
lasted 3 days in turn covered the neighboring areas with a white cloud of
pulverized concrete dust and another one of black soot, furthermore, it caused
the discharge of 15,000 tons of heavy fuel into the sea, generating an oil
slick, measuring 150 kilometers by 220 km, contaminating the Lebanese coastline
and damaging marine fauna.
- following bombardment of the electric transformers of
Saïda: a cloud of poly-chlorinated biphenyls (PCB), which, according to
Greenpeace, are bio-cumulative and long-lasting chemicals that are capable of
provoking cancer upon inhalation.
E) Psychological and cultural damage:
- following the bombardment of the power station of
Jiyyeh, damage to the archeological site of Byblos - an archeological site
registered with the World Inheritance of Humanity by UNESCO. Blocks of stone
constituting the base of the 2 medieval towers - north and south - at the entry
of the port--were covered with a thick layer of hydrocarbons. The vestiges of
antiquity (Phoenician, Hellenic and Roman) situated at further below, were also
covered with the same substances;
– total and direct destruction – according
to the Board of Inquiry in Lebanon installed by the Human Rights Council of the
UN - of 16 schools and partial destruction of 157 others;
- destruction of the television broadcasting station
Al-Manar TV. Regarding this type of attack, the Security Council resolution,
Protection of Civilians During Armed Conflicts, S/RES/1738, Dec. 23, §
3.10 writes: “….that media equipment and installations constitute
civilian objects, and in this respect shall not be the object of attack or of
reprisals, unless they are military objectives…” ;
2. LAW
A) Upon the outbreak of the Israeli attack and the government in Tel Aviv's
alleged justification for it, the Jury retains as correct and therefore
admissible for purposes of the definition of the attack itself as an
unjustified and illegal aggression, the three following considerations:
1) “above all, the “Blue Line” does
not constitute an international border between Lebanon and Israel, but it is
simply a line of demarcation, traced by UNIFIL, which
is disputed in various points by the Lebanese authorities”: it should be
remembered on this subject that at the time of the invasion the Israeli army
occupied the Lebanese zone known as 'the Sheeba Farms'”;
2) “The Geneva Convention on the treatment of
prisoners of war has, under Article 4, placed national liberation movements
(and therefore, in this specific case, organizations of the Lebanese
resistance) under international protection. This protection remains valid
whether these formations carry out their operations inside their own national
territory, or if they take place inside the territory of the occupying power.
This implies that their operating range can extend to their entire territorial
space of the occupying power”;
3) “Moreover, these stipulations permit any
resistance force to carry out its operations in zones which do not form part of
the territory of the occupying power, but even territories of a third party,
each time these zones are under control of the occupying power”;
This means, that besides the obvious disproportion
between the action of the capture of the two soldiers, and the
“reaction,” which was concretized in the catastrophic list of
actions of the already referred-to Israeli “reprisals” previously
listed, that the invasion of July 12, 2006 had no justification or legitimacy
within the meaning of Charter of the United Nations and the International
Convention of Geneva. On the contrary, it constituted an act of war, albeit
undeclared, in opposition to international law, one of numerous examples
repeated by the State of Israel from 1948 to today, as is demonstrated by all
the UN resolutions that have been ignored by Israel;
B) the acts carried out by the Israeli Armed Forces
during the events of the war that took place from July 12 to August 24, 2006,
such as those verified during the hearing, clearly constitute, according to the
propositions stated in the Bill of Indictment, crimes against humanity and war
crimes, in violation of the Geneva Convention of 1949, of the Statute of the
International Criminal Court of 1998, and of Protocol A of 1977.
In particular, it is obvious that these acts
constituted a “extended and systematic attack against the civilian
population” as defined by Art. 7 of the Statute of the International
Criminal Court of 1998 (“crimes against humanity”), and precisely
by subparagraph 1, points a, b, d and e (those last two applying first of all
to the constraint against forcing the population to flee bombardment, and then
to the attacks against the convoys of civilian cars by which such escape was
carried out).
It is also evident that the same acts constitute a
violation of Art 8 of the same Statute (“war crimes”) and of the
Geneva Conventions to which it refers, as they concern:
- “Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious
injury to body or health” of the civilian population (subparagraph 2, a,
iii)
- caused the “extensive destruction and
appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out
unlawfully and wantonly” (2, a, iv);
- "intentionally directing attacks against the
civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct
part in hostilities” (2, b, i);
- "intentionally directing attacks against
civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives (2, b,
ii);
- “intentionally directing attacks against
personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in a
humanitarian assistance” (2, b, iii);
- “Intentionally launching an attack in the
knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to
civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe
damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation
to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated” (2, b,
iv);
- bombarded “villages, dwellings or buildings
which are undefended and which are not military objectives” (2, b,
v);
- “intentionally directing attacks against
buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science ... historic
monuments, hospitals …” (2, b, ix);
- used “bullets which expand or flatten easily in
the human body” (2, b, xix), or many weapons, projectiles,
materials… with characteristics such to cause… unnecessary
suffering, or which by their very nature strike in an indiscriminate manner in
violation of the international law” (2, b, xx);
- diffused by planes of the written call to the
civilian populations of all ages, threatening that in the case that they would
not have left their dwellings and zones of residence they would be bombarded
without discrimination, and by thus exerting a premeditated threat of
collective punishment (2, b, xii and moreover Protocol A of 1977);
C) The acts carried out by the Israeli Armed Forces
during the war from July 12, 2006 to August 24, 2006, such as those verified
during the above mentioned hearing, also constitute an obvious violation of
Art. 6 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court of 1998 (“crime
of genocide”) and Art. 2 of the Geneva Convention of 1948 for the
prevention and prohibition of genocide. It would be incorrect indeed to be
intimidated by the gravity of the charge, where its decisive elements are
present.
In truth, the considerations which impel the judgment
of Israel as being guilty not only of war crimes and crimes against humanity,
but also, with regard to the war against Lebanon of 2006, of the crime of
genocide, are as follows:
1) the legal description of this crime in the Statute
of the International Criminal Court of 1998, taken directly from the 1948
Geneva Convention and thus from the Nuremberg Tribunal, permits its application
to many if not all the conflicts of our epoch, characterized, as is well-known,
by such a high technological level of the armaments of war that as a result it
strikes down in these same conflicts an ever greater number from the civilian
population than from the armed forces: indeed, Art. 6 of the Statute cited
specifies that a series of typical actions during a war, which “kill
members of the group” or “cause serious wounds to the physical or
psychic integrity of people belonging to the group,” become crimes of
genocide, if they are carried out “with the intention of destroying in
their entirety or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious
group,” defining this latter, in which in any event the
“intention” always becomes easily demonstrable in the case of
destruction of a “part” of the “national group….”
(and not all of its members, as the extreme definition of the term used would
require: genocide, i.e., extermination of people until its disappearance).
2) In the case de quo, the war of Israel
against Lebanon of 2006, “the intention” of Israel to destroy
“in part” the Lebanese “national group” was amply
demonstrated during the hearings by all the witnesses and all documentations
and evidence provided: and thus, in a period when genocide is so easily
charged, not only by the media, but even potentially founded on above mentioned
“broad” codification of such a crime, e.g., Art. 6 of the Statute
of the CPI (with the goal of demonizing any country not "politically
correct" that does not conform to the new international Israeli-U.S.
post-bipolar order), this case, Lebanon, and this war – the Israeli
attack of July-August 2006 - fits without a shadow of a doubt in the penal
fattispecie of the “crime of genocide”. Thus this crime is
indeed admissible by this Jury, and it is possible to attribute it to Israel,
because of the regularity with which the Israeli Armed Forces carried out its
attacks primarily against civilians, by killing them (“a”), by
causing them “serious damages to the physical or psychic integrity”
(“b”), and by subjecting them “deliberately… to living
conditions such to comprise the physical, total or partial destruction of the
group itself" (“c”): the prohibited bombs, in particular those
with fragmentation, and the toy-bombs, constitute overwhelming proof that
Israel perpetrated genocide against the Lebanese nation. The shocking
photographic documentation presented during the hearing is ictu oculi
the most overwhelming evidence of this crime.
FOR ALL THESE
REASONS
The International Citizens’ Tribunal on Lebanon,
according to conventional and usual international law, and according to the
imperative standards contained in the 1948 and 1949 Geneva Conventions and
Protocol A (1977) and in the Statute of the International Criminal Court of
1998; acknowledging the enormous crimes committed by Israel in the 2006 war
(indiscriminate bombardments and destruction, murder of more than one thousand
and one hundred persons, among them children, women and elderly persons,
enormous damage to social and economic life, use of forbidden arms, etc.)
declares the Israeli authorities responsible for the 2006 war against Lebanon
and guilty of the following international crimes:
War Crimes
Crimes against humanity
Genocide
The Jury
Lilia Solano (President), Claudio
Moffa (Reporter), Adolfo Ascabal, Rajindar Sachar
Brussels, February 24,
2008
(translation from French: John
Catalinotto)
