ISRAEL-LEBANON: U.N. Report Says Refugee Camp Was Targeted

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, May 7 1996 (IPS) - In a strong rebuke to Israel, following a week of haggling, the United Nations Tuesday criticised a deadly Israeli attack on a U.N. refugee camp in southern Lebanon.

Despite pressure from the United States and others to change the findings, an investigation headed by the senior U.N. military adviser Maj. Gen. Franklin van Kappen showed that Israel deliberately targeted the Qana refugee camp for shelling on Apr 18.

Some 100 people were killed when 13 shells exploded in the camp, according to U.N. officials.

“While the possibility cannot be ruled out completely, the pattern of impacts in the Qana area makes it unlikely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of technical and/or procedural errors,” U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali wrote in a note to the Security Council.

“This incident is all the more serious because civilians, including women and children, had sought refuge in the United Nations compound in Qana,” Boutros-Ghali added.

Based on interviews in Qana and with Israeli officials, van Kappen concluded that the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) targeted the area after guerrillas from the Shi’ite rebel group Hizbollah (Party of God) fired mortars at Israel from nearby.

Just 15 minutes before the shelling began, he wrote, Hizbollah fired between five and eight rounds at northern Israel from a site just 220 metres from the U.N. compound. Van Kappen added, “At some point (it is not completely clear whether before or after the shelling), two or three Hezbollah fighters entered the United Nations compound, where their families were.”

Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Shimon Peres, have used that information to criticise the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) of sheltering Hezbollah guerrillas.

But U.N. officials contend that separating guerrillas from refugees during a crisis, such as last month’s two-week Israeli attack on Lebanon, is virtually impossible.

“Hizbollah fighters don’t wear uniforms,” U.N. spokeswoman Sylvana Foa said. “It is very difficult…to check the identity and bona fides of everyone who goes into a camp.”

But Foa added that, in the Qana camp’s case, “The families of Hizbollah people would take refuge…but these were women and children, not fighters.”

In any case, van Kappen said, Israel failed to provide satisfactory answers for why so many Israeli shells fell on the U.N. compound, 200 metres north of the Hizbollah mortar site that was the ostensible target. The U.N. team counted 36 impacts in the Qana area, with 13 hitting the compound and four “very close to it.”

Nor, he added, has Israel satisfactorily explained sightings by eyewitnesses of helicopters and remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs), or “drones,” over Qana just before the shelling. “The presence of one helicopter and an RPV were documented on a video tape, which covers the latter part of the shelling,” van Kappen wrote.

Israeli Brig. Gen. Dan Harel told reporters here Monday that there were no aircraft above Qana before or during the shelling. He explained to van Kappen that, although there was an RPV in the vicinity of Qana, it was not directly overhead and could not directly observe the refugee camp.

But the United Nations discounted Israel’s claims. “Contrary to repeated denials, two Israeli helicopters and a remotely piloted vehicle were present in the Qana area at the time of the shelling,” van Kappen said.

Israeli officials rejected the report’s conclusions, arguing that the shelling of Qana was caused by several errors, including the use of IDF maps that mistakenly placed the camp about 170 metres farther away from the shelling than it actually was.

“We put parameters of safety around each and every U.N. compound,” Harel said. “We wouldn’t shoot deliberately into a U.N. compound. …These things can’t happen deliberately in a democratic country like Israel.”

Washington, which last week objected to a draft version of the van Kappen report, criticised the United Nations for what State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns called “this infatuation, in places like New York, of looking into all the corners of the past, when the Israeli government has already stood up and taken its responsibility.”

“Israel understands this was a grave mistake that cost the lives of 102 people,” Burns said. “Where is Hezbollah? …Why did Hizbollah station its own fighters 300 yards from the refugee camp and have them fire Katyusha rockets into Israel, to attract the fire of the Israeli military?”

U.S. opposition to further U.N. action may well prevent the Security Council from acting on the current report.

One Council ambassador, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he did not know whether there would be any momentum for further action from the Council, where the United States holds veto power.

The report, however, adds to Israel’s diplomatic isolation. Already, the Apr 18 shelling, which garnered criticism from the U.N. General Assembly, forced Israel to halt its attacks on Hizbollah, reinstating a truce outside of the 15-km zone in Southern Lebanon occupied by the IDF and its proxies.

Another immediate consequence could be to dim Boutros-Ghali’s already fading chances of winning U.S. support for re-election as secretary-general next November.

Several diplomats told IPS that releasing the report was a brave move by Boutros-Ghali at a time when he needs to court the United States to avoid a possible veto of his re-election. But the Egyptian U.N. chief’s boldness may further damage his prospects, as the release of the report came at a time when he was already under attack by Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole.