Distr.
GENERAL
E/CN.4/2000/NGO/75
8 February 2000
Original: ENGLISH
UNITED NATIONS, COMMISSION ON HUMAN
RIGHTS
Fifty-sixth session
Item 9 of the provisional agenda
QUESTION OF THE VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND
FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS IN ANY PART OF THE WORLD
Written statement submitted by North-South XXI, a
non-governmental
organization in special consultative status
The Secretary-General has received the following written
statement which is circulated in accordance with Economic and Social
Council resolution 1996/31.
[20 December 1999]
The question of violations of the human rights of Lebanese
civilians perpetrated by Israel in Lebanon
1. After Israel's invasion of Lebanon in March 1978, the United
Nations Security Council passed resolution
425 (1978)
calling on Israel to " immediately cease its military action against
Lebanese territorial integrity and withdraw forthwith its forces
from all Lebanese territory". Today, some 22 years since the passing
of that resolution, Israel, in defiance of international laws and in
defiance of repeated international condemnation of its actions,
continues illegally to occupy approximately 10 per cent of Lebanese
territory, comprising hundreds of towns and villages in the south of
Lebanon. Israel also maintains a contingent of approximately 2,000
Israeli army regulars and 1,500 Israeli-supported militia in south
Lebanon.
2. Israel continues to commit large-scale human rights abuses
against the civilian population of Lebanon. On a near daily basis,
it conducts air strikes on Lebanese villages and cities, sometimes
sending hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians into flight from
their homes. The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) conducts military
offensives in areas of Lebanon well beyond the zone it occupies.
Israeli intelligence agents carry out targeted assassinations of
Israel's perceived opponents throughout Lebanon. Israel maintains a
prison in Khiam, Lebanon, which it has used for the indefinite
imprisonment and torture of Lebanese political prisoners since 1985,
and for which it has come under escalating international
condemnation because of the gross violations of the human rights of
the detainees held there, many of whom have died as a result of
torture while in custody.
3. The United Nations forces in Lebanon have not only borne
witness to Israel's atrocities against Lebanese civilians, but they
have also been the direct target of Israeli attacks, especially
where they attempted to protect or rescue civilians. One specific
incident in point is the massacre at Qana, Lebanon, on 18 April
1996. Shortly after 2.00 p.m. local time that day, the IDF began an
artillery bombardment of the headquarters compound of the Fijian
battalion of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in
Qana. At the time, approximately 800 Lebanese civilians were being
sheltered inside the compound. Over 100 civilians were killed and
scores more, along with UNIFIL troops, were injured. The IDF
artillery unit that fired on the UNIFIL base was positioned inside
of Lebanon.
4. Israel denied that it intended to kill civilians when it
shelled the UNIFIL compound in Qana. However, an investigation of
the incident conducted by Major-General Franklin van Kappen,
Military Adviser to the former Secretary-General of the United
Nations, Boutros Boutros Ghali, found that it was "unlikely that the
shelling was the result of gross technical or procedural error". The
critical facts that led General van Kappen to this conclusion were:
(1) the pattern and distribution of impacts, which showed the
majority of shells falling on or in the immediate vicinity of the
buildings in the compound; (2) the perceptible shift in the weight
of fire from an initial barrage that fell on the mortar site to a
second barrage that fell on the United Nations compound; and (3)
that there were two Israeli helicopters and a remotely piloted
vehicle (drone) flying above the Qana area at the time of shelling.
5. Approximately two thirds of the shells used were
proximity-fuse which explode above the target, spreading huge sheets
of shrapnel. Because of the type of ordnance employed, many of the
civilians sheltering inside the compound were torn to pieces; some
were decapitated and burnt beyond recognition. Fifty-two of the dead
were Lebanese children.
6. Evidence that the attack was deliberate is abundant. The
Director of Israeli Artillery, Brigadier General Dan Harel,
confirmed in an interview on CNN on 7 May 1996 that the Israeli
Defence Forces had been informed by UNIFIL only two days prior to
the incident that there were some 5,000 to 9,000 refugees sheltering
in UNIFIL bases in the area. UNIFIL spokesperson Timor Goksel told
the press that he had informed the IDF that civilians were
sheltering in UNIFIL bases. Major General Moshe Ya'alon, the head of
IDF intelligence, also confirmed that Israel was fully aware that
civilians were sheltering on the base.
7. Israel adamantly denied that it had a drone or surveillance
aircraft over Qana until The Independent, a
British newspaper, reported that a videotape had been made by a
United Nations soldier at a base nearby depicting a drone over Qana
during the shelling. Drones are typically used to guide gunners in
firing at objectives that they cannot otherwise see. Thereafter,
Israel admitted to the presence of a drone, but claimed it was on
"another mission". Israel then released only 4 minutes of the 50
minutes of videotape that it possesses taken by its drone. The
release of that footage indicates that the drone was successfully
transmitting images of the scene. The fact that the IDF had a drone
over Qana at the time it was firing artillery at the United Nations
compound indicates that it was using the drone to determine where to
fire, and it was able to see where each shell fell.
8. Additional evidence that the shelling was deliberate is that,
according to UNIFIL officials, the IDF was repeatedly informed by
telephone that it was shelling civilians. UNIFIL officials told the
press that only one or two minutes into the barrage, they contacted
Israel and informed it that its forces were shelling their base. For
at least 11 to 12 minutes after the initial UNIFIL contact was made,
the IDF continued to fire artillery at the base despite continued
frantic requests by UNIFIL to cease fire.
9. The report by Major-General van Kappen confirms that the
orders to fire came from Israeli officers of some level of
seniority. Under intense political pressure from Israel and the
United States, the United Nations dropped the investigation and
never revealed to the public the underlying evidence and findings
upon which the van Kappen report was based. No final report on the
Qana massacre was ever published.
10. The Qana massacre is only one of a multitude of incidents
constituting persistent and gross violations of the human rights of
Lebanese civilians perpetrated by Israel. It is also one instance
where the United Nations possesses or controls the evidence
necessary to establish Israel's responsibility for these violations.
11. A compelling reason for the United Nations to reopen the
investigation of the Qana massacre is that it has in its possession
or control key evidence surrounding the massacre - its very forces
in fact conducted the principal investigation in the immediate
aftermath. Only the United Nations is privy to that evidence.
Moreover, the massacre occurred on a United Nations base and United
Nations troops and personnel were fired on. And, as the evidence
establishes, those United Nations troops were fired on
intentionally.
12. Israel must be found responsible for its violations of
international law and its human rights abuses of Lebanese civilians.
These violations include violations of the guarantees of the right
to life under the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other
instruments; the protection of civilians from attack guaranteed
under humanitarian law including the Geneva Conventions of 12 August
1949 and the Protocols Additional thereto; the prohibition against
torture under the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel,
Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and other instruments;
and the prohibition against genocide under the Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
13. For legal and moral reasons, the United Nations must act in
this matter on behalf of its own soldiers, and on behalf of the
Lebanese civilians who were murdered while in the custody and under
the protection of UNIFIL soldiers, on territory clearly demarcated
as a United Nations base. The effectiveness and, indeed, relevance
of the United Nations and its human rights agencies will be measured
not by how eloquently it articulates its principles - but rather by
how it puts them into practice.
Our recommendations to the Commission on Human Rights
14. We request that the Commission appoint a special rapporteur
to conduct a thorough investigation into the Qana massacre, and into
other gross violations of human rights and international law by
Israel in Lebanon including, inter alia , the attack on the
UNIFIL compound in Mazdal Zoun a few days prior to the Qana massacre;
the deliberate targeting of civilian homes, vehicles and ambulances,
including an incident in Mansuri, Lebanon, in which an Israeli
helicopter gunship attacked an ambulance, killing two women and four
children; and the forced evacuation of hundreds of thousands of
civilians from their homes in south Lebanon.
15. We request that the Commission issue a full and complete
report of Israel' s legal responsibility for the above-mentioned
abuses as well as those that are ongoing, and determine appropriate
modes of reparations, as well as specific measures to ensure against
further violations of international law and human rights by Israel
in Lebanon.
