On Michael Walzer, Gaza, and the Lebanon War

...all of these military ventures ended quickly, some of them with prisoner exchanges...

...13 Both the New York Times and Hdaretz reported the Human Rights Watch investigation and conclusions in the first week of August—well before Walzer's August 9 statements...

...The most obvious examples, well-documented and often cited in Israel, were the attacks on Jordanian villages in the 1950s...

...Among the methods used for these purposes— under the guise of protecting Israeli security from terrorists—are the closing of Gazan trade and commerce with the outside world...

...Regardless of their ideologies, however, in both Hamas and Hezbollah there are indications of pragmatism and potential flexibility...

...the prevention of thousands of farmers from reaching their lands and orchards...

...Among those writing in this vein were the wellknown general critics of Israeli policies—often called "leftists" in the American press— such as Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, Tom Segev, and Gideon Samet, as well as prominent academics such as Galia Golan (former head of Peace Now in Israel), Zeev Sternhell, and Zeev Maoz...

...By contrast, on occasion Israeli politicians or military men have been considerably more forthcoming on this issue...

...In this essay I have chosen to focus on ARGUMENTS Michael Walzer, precisely because he is one of the most intellectually and morally impressive, most well-known, and therefore most influential supporter of Israel—at least among the more thoughtful members of our community, who are far less likely to be influenced by the easily discountable rants of our Abraham Foxmans, Alan Dershowitzes, and Martin Peretzes...

...Moreover, he argues, the main Israeli targets were roads and bridges, and that (unlike clearly civilian infrastructure targets, such as electrical power stations or water purification plants) it was legitimate to attack them—even at the cost of some civilian suffering—because they were being used to move Hezbollah's rockets closer to Israel and for arms resupply from Syria...

...8. Interview with Gur in the Israeli newspaper Al Hamishar, May 10, 1978...

...Hamas is attacking after the Israelis departed Gaza...

...JEROME SLATER is University Research Scholar at SUNY/Buffalo...

...After developing his just war theory with great sophistication and persuasiveness, Walzer then applies his analysis to many specific cases of warfare, from the ancient world until the present...

...Throughout the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the American government and the American Jewish community—for the best of motives, but in nearly willful ignorance of the realities—have played the role of enabler of Israeli policies...

...he argues that the Lebanese civilian casualties (estimated at about 1,200 deaths, more than 4,000 wounded) were primarily a consequence of Hezbollah's placement of missile launchers and other legitimate military targets in civilian areas...

...The quote is from a news story by Craig S. Smith, "Israel to Discuss Foreign Troops as Border Guard," July 24, 2006...

...The Israeli Methods Even if Israel had a just cause to go to war in Lebanon, its methods violated the two key moral constraints on how just wars must be fought: the rule that military responses must be proportional to the military provocation and the rule that civilians must never be intentionally attacked...

...in 1982, when at least 10,000 Lebanese civilians were killed...

...To begin, Israel's most important newspaper, Ha'aretz, had carried a number of news stories, editorials, and op-ed columns that were highly critical of the methods that Israel was using in Lebanon...

...For that very reason, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Walzer's recent arguments defending (in however qualified a manner) Israeli policies in Gaza and Lebanon are harmful to Israel's best interests...

...Much more useful, he argues, is the principle of "responsibility": his argument is that because Hezbollah employed the method of "human shields" (placing its rockets and other military installations in the heart of civilian areas), it bore far more responsibility for the Lebanese civilian casualties than did Israel...

...in light of the Palestinian rocket attacks aimed at Israeli towns, that certainly complicates matters when we judge the overall moral issue...

...Gaza Walzer argues that the continued rocket fire from Gaza aimed at Israeli civilians (whether or not it hits them) can no longer be regarded as a response to Israeli occupation, because the occupation ended in 2005...

...The moral issue aside, the war against Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism must not be fought in a manner that threat98 n DISSENT / Winter 2007 ens the very survival of Israel...

...Summary of Human Rights Watch Report, "Fatal Strikes: Israel's Indiscriminate Attacks Against Civilians in Lebanon," August 2006...

...96 n DISSENT / Winter 2007 These are not persuasive arguments...

...Even so, Walzer seems to suggest that he might distinguish between terrorist tactics in a just war and those in an unjust war, at least judging by his explanation (in "War Fair") of why he recently refused to sign a condemnation of the Israeli actions in Gaza, a statement that claimed that the Palestinian rocket attacks were simply the inevitable consequences of continued Israeli occupation...

...the destruction of much of Gaza's main electrical power plant...

...Gideon Samet, "The Curse of Living by the Sword," September 8, 2006...

...John Kifner, "Human Rights Group Accuses Israel of War Crimes," New York Times, August 24, 2006...

...In his most important work in this vein, Just and Unjust Wars (1977), Walzer argues that we must make two separate evaluations of the morality of war: the justice of the cause or purpose for which war is fought and the morality or justice of the methods of warfare...

...An Integral Part of This Conflict, " bitterlemons, July 17, 2006 11...

...To be sure, just war principles require that armed resistance, even against occupation and repression, must avoid deliberate attacks on innocents...

...In the latest such apparent disjuncture, Walzer has lent partially qualified support to the Israeli war in Lebanon, as well as to Israeli policies in Gaza since the removal of the settlements in 2005...

...Were nonmilitary options available to Israel...

...14 Israel's True National Interests In the opening sentence of "War Fair," Michael Walzer states that "Israel is now at war with an enemy whose hostility is extreme, explicit, unrestrained, and driven by an ideology of religious hatred...

...Also, Robert Malley, formerly a high State Department official dealing with the Israeli -Palestinian conflict, observes that the raid "enabled Hezbollah to show that it alone in the Arab world would come to the Palestinians' defense," in "A New Middle East," (New York Review, September 21, 2006), p. 86...

...Although Hamas and Hezbollah are probably deterrable, sooner or later more fanatical organizations, such as alQaeda or similar groups, are likely to succeed in acquiring biological or nuclear weapons, and then they may very well use them against Israel— or even against this country—regardless of the obvious consequences for their own peoples and societies...

...Its main conclusion was that Israel had carried out indiscriminate attacks in which it "deliberately targeted civilians...

...Astonishingly, Gur openly acknowledged what can only be described as Israeli state terrorism: "I've been in the army thirty years...

...The occupier then offers to withdraw from Massachusetts—sort of—but balks at New York...

...Certain kinds of attacks, he agrees, would be morally wrong: direct attacks aimed at civilians, of course, but also attacks on economic infrastructures, including communications and transportation networks, electric power grids, and water pumping stations and purification plants...

...Given the political power of the American Jewish community, it is unlikely that there will be any change in American governmental policy without its support...

...In other words, despite the fact that there were major Israeli attacks on Lebanon in 1978, 1982, and 1996, causing massive destruction and tens of thousands of civilian casualties, Walzer appears to be suggesting that Hezbollah not only has no objective need for a deterrent against major Israeli attacks, but that they know they don't...

...6. "When it followed with its raid, Hezbollah said it was acting in solidarity with the Palestinians" (Smith, "Freeing Prisoners...

...It is clear that Walzer is convinced that, except for some regrettable incidents (like the attack on Qana) or some other "aspects" of Israeli policy that have not been "clearly exDISSENT / Winter 2007 • 9 3 ARGUMENTS plained" or "probably can't be defended," in both Lebanon and Gaza the Israelis have tried hard to distinguish between civilians and fighters...

...Since when has the population of South Lebanon been so sacred...

...4. Aside from a number of Ha'aretz and other Israeli media commentaries, see Craig S. Smith, "Freeing Prisoners Key Goal in Fight Against Israel," New York Times, August 4, 2006...

...Preventing such attacks on its civilian population, then, was not only a just cause, but a necessary one...

...The emphasis of these critics was primarily a moral one...

...10 Similarly, wrote Zeev Schiff, the longtime centrist defense analyst for Ha'aretz, "by encouraging large numbers of civilians to flee . . . to serve as a source of pressure," Israel was making "a strategic mistake," because such methods had led to the creation of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian occupied territories...

...He writes regularly on American foreign policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for both professional and general audiences...

...we have been fighting against a population that lives in villages and towns...

...intended to generate mass public pressure [on the Lebanese government...

...What did we do the entire length of the Suez Canal...

...The clear intention of the practice is to pressure the Palestinian Authority and the armed Palestinian organizations by harming the entire civilian population...

...It is widely understood in Israel that the real purpose of this action was to ease the overall burden of occupation on Israel rather than on the Palestinians and to allow Israel to consolidate its occupation of the West Bank, which is far larger, more populous, and potentially more economically viable than Gaza...

...If that is correct, then clearly Israel has other choices, the most important of which should be—for both moral and security reasons—to change the context of its conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah by ending the Israeli occupation and ever-worsening repression of the Palestinian people...

...The Israeli interviewer then comments: "You maintain that the civilian population should be punished...

...August 30, 2006: Gideon Levy, "Gaza's Darkness," September 3, 2006...

...By consistently failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians," the report concluded, "Israel has violated one of the most fundamental tenets of the laws of war . . . the extent of the pattern and the seriousness of the consequences indicate the commission of war crimes...

...DISSENT / Winter 2007 n 99...

...Indeed, he suggests, Israel would have been within its rights and perhaps even wiser if it had taken out those rockets earlier, even before the Hezbollah raid—the casus Belli in Walzer's view—"provided the occasion" to do so...

...His arguments are developed in a widely quoted article, "War Fair," in the July 31 issue of the New Republic and supplemented in an August 9, 2006, statement "Moral Considerations in the Lebanon War" to members of Americans for Peace Now.' Walzer's argument is that because Israel ended its occupation of Gaza and Lebanon, it had not merely a just but also a necessary cause to go to war against both Hamas and Hezbollah: both attacked Israel across internationally recognized boundaries, especially by rocket attacks aimed at the Israeli civilian population...

...A million and a half refugees...

...Lebanon As almost everyone has noted, the IsraeliHezbollah war was different from the IsraeliPalestinian conflict in Gaza, for there is no question that there was a genuine Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon more than six years ago...

...There are alternative explanations, however, especially that the purpose was not to launch an attack on Israel but to deter major Israeli attacks on Lebanon.' Walzer simply dismisses this possibility, in effect arguing that Hezbollah needed no deterrent against Israel—"Israel withdrew from Lebanon and no one in Lebanon expected an Israeli attack...

...Put differently, their support for individual suicidal attacks on Israel notwithstanding, there is no evidence that they are undeterred by the prospect of national catastrophe, which is what massive Israeli retaliation against future Hezbollah rocket attacks would entail...

...Even so, the appropriateness of the Israeli response, in both moral and security terms, depends on judgments about four central issues: What was the purpose of the Hezbollah attack...

...For a particularly remarkable example, consider the 1978 response of General Mordechai Gur (then chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces and later a leading Labor Party politician) to Israeli criticism of attacks in Lebanon...

...To begin, it was clear from the outset that Israel was deliberately attacking targets that were illegitimate by Walzer's own criteria: Israel did hit power plants in Lebanon (as he acknowledges), just as it had in Gaza, and it bombed apartment houses, killing hundreds of innocent civilians, merely because they were also the residences of Hezbollah officials and militants— surely a disproportionate action by any reasonable criteria...

...No informed and serious discussion of morality and warfare can take place today without reference to Just and Unjust Wars and the debate it has engendered...

...Thus, it is not really true that (as many have argued) Israel had no choice but to respond militarily, for it could have continued to observe the long-established rules of the game, namely a proportionate military response, followed by a prisoner exchange...

...THIS IS NOT to deny that the Hezbollah rockets, in the hands of an organization that at least on the ideological level remains committed to the destruction of Israel, are a serious matter...

...No state can ignore such attacks, he says, asking us to imagine what the U.S...

...Walzer argues that it is not useful to talk about proportionality in the context of the Lebanon War, on the grounds that proportionality is very difficult to measure: what number of lost Lebanese lives, he asks, is proportional to the Israeli goal of protecting its cities...

...Beyond the outright killings, it is by now obvious that Israel has followed a deliberate policy of collective punishment and impoverishment of the Palestinian civilian population...

...Even if some kind of military response was justifiable, was the Israeli military action proportionate to the initial Hezbollah attack...

...12 In addition, on August 2, the respected human rights organization Human Rights Watch released the results of an on-the-ground investigation it had conducted on the Israeli conduct of the war...

...Whether or not one believes that Israel has genuinely withdrawn from Gaza, no one challenges the fact that it continues to occupy and settle the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to repress all Palestinian resistance—including non-terrorist and often even nonviolent resistance— to those actions...

...In short, it is quite likely that the problems posed by Hezbollah cannot be regarded as if they had no connection to Israel's policies toward the Palestinians...

...the bombing of roads and bridges within Gaza and between Gaza and the West Bank...

...It is an intentional part of Israeli policy...

...Hezbollah's own explanation for its crossborder raid of July 12 is given credence by a number of Israeli and other analysts, namely that the main purpose was to force a prisoner exchange with Israel, not to provoke a major crisis with Israel.`' As has been widely noted (and acknowledged by Walzer), there had been a history of mutual Israeli-Hezbollah limited military raids, prisoner seizures, and retaliations...

...the daily humiliations and often severe hardships imposed by draconic Israeli measures against the free movement of Palestinians throughout the West Bank...

...Even worse, Israel's recent actions in both Gaza and Lebanon have strengthened the forces of militant religious fundamentalism and hatred of Israel as well as of the United States throughout the Arab and Islamic world, thus increasing the risks of an ultimate, unthinkable catastrophe...

...Amnesty: Israel Committed War Crimes in Lebanon Campaign," Ha'aretz, August 23, 2006...

...In the final analysis (in the standard but unavoidable cliché), there is no military solution to the problem of terrorism, if only because there appears to be an inexhaustible supply of enraged Islamic young men who can always find a base of operation in the Islamic world, and who will inevitably gain increasing access to ever more powerful military technology...

...That argument is not only factually misleading, it would be a non sequitur even if it were true...

...If they had not done so, he asserted in the APN session, the Lebanese civilian casualties would have been much higher...

...a number of Israeli attacks against Lebanon in the 1970s...

...The only hope for a secure Israeli future—and to this I know that Walzer fully agrees—is to offer the Palestinians a genuinely fair and generous two-state political settlement...

...Gur responds: "And how . . . I have never doubted it...

...To be sure, in his recent APN statements Walzer acknowledged some of this history, but only in passing, or when pushed, or as if it were an aberration (admittedly "there have been incidents in the past," is the way he put it) that ARGUMENTS didn't represent long-standing policies or at least behavior...

...to force the Islamic militants to release the three [kidnapped] Israeli soldiers .. . and end the rocket attacks...

...IN ADDITION to the Israeli critics, from the onset of the Lebanon war, the New York Times, which had long downplayed serious moral criticism of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians, appeared to have instituted a striking change in policy: at the height of the war and on an almost daily basis, it gave detailed and front page treatment to the Israeli attacks on the Lebanese infrastructure, civilian neighborhoods and residences, civilian trucks, vans of fleeing civilians, and convoys of medical supplies, "effectively making [southern Lebanon] . . . a free-fire zone," with all the obvious consequences that entailed...

...We should remember that the rise of Hamas was the consequence of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and the rise of Hezbollah was the consequence of earlier Israeli attacks on, and the occupation of, southern Lebanon...

...response would be if Buffalo or Detroit were attacked by missiles launched from "some Canadian no-man's land...

...the use of massive airpower against Egyptian cities during the 1970-1973 "War of Attrition...

...That might be persuasive if Walzer's assessment of the purposes of the Hezbollah rocket buildup is correct...

...Did the Israeli attack succeed in improving Israeli longterm security...

...The accepted definition of "terrorism" is the deliberate attack on innocent civilians, in pursuit of some political purpose...

...9. Ha'aretz, May 15, 1978 10...

...even when Israeli settlements had not been struck...

...See especially the editorial "Escalation Before the End," August 6, 2006, and two columns by Zvi Bar'el, "Hezbollah/ Nasrallah Has Time," August 4, 2006, and "The Deterrence Thing," August 6, 2006...

...As well, Jessica Montell, the leader of the B'tselem, the most important Israeli human rights organization, wrote that "the suffering of the [Palestinian] population is not merely a byproduct of Israel's attacks against militants...

...3. "UN Trade Agency Warns of Palestinian Economic Collapse," Ha'aretz, September 12, 2006...

...In fact, Israel's own military analysts concluded that throughout the war Syria continued to transfer large quantities of war material, including rockets, to Hezbollah.' The most crucial point is this: in both Lebanon and Gaza, as well as throughout its entire history, Israel has often carried out inherently indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on military targets, and sometimes even deliberately and systematically attacked Arab civilians and their crucial infrastructures, in order to intimidate them, or to punish them for their alleged support of Israel's enemies, or to induce them to turn against their own governments or internal militant organizations...

...A Strategic Mistake," Ha'aretz, July 20, 2006...

...1. The full recording of the APN statement and subsequent comments are available on the Americans for Peace Now Web site, under "Hot Issues...

...A Form of Collective Punishment," bitterlemons, July 17, 2006...

...Several days after the Gur statements, Zeev Schiff, then as now a leading Ha'aretz military correspondent, commented: "In South Lebanon we struck the civilian population consciously, because they deserved it...

...Consider a quite different analogy than the one (a rocket attack on American cities from Canadian territory) that Walzer has offered: suppose a powerful state occupied the American northeast, generating an armed resistance...

...It specifically refuted the Israeli-Walzer argument that Hezbollah had been using Lebanese civilians as DISSENT / Winter 2007 n 97 ARGUMENTS human shields, saying that its investigation "found no cases in which Hezbollah deliberately used civilians as shields to protect them from retaliatory IDF attack...

...It is misleading because although the withdrawal of Jewish settlements in 2005 ended Israel's direct occupation of Gaza, it did not end what might be called its indirect occupation— and still less, its severe repression of the Gazan people, which does not require direct occupation...

...In the wake of the most recent war, by all accounts Hezbollah—whatever its short-term military losses—is politically stronger than ever...

...and in 1996—as well as, of course, against the Palestinian population in the past five years...

...His main focus is on the use by Hamas and Hezbollah of civilians as "human shields" against Israeli attack...

...Surely it was foreseeable that destroying Lebanon's internal transportation system would not only directly kill many civilians but would do enormous damage to the Lebanese civilian economy— while at the same time causing only minor military problems to Hezbollah, which surely would find ways to bypass the main roads and bridges and continue its military movements and resupply routes...

...Even so, however, the overall long-term consequences are likely to outweigh any immediate benefits to Israel...

...the disruption of the private and public health systems, including the Israeli quarantines that have produced grave shortages of medical supplies and medicines for Palestinian hospitals...

...It is hard not to see this assessment as a failure to see the world as the Lebanese—or, at least, Hezbollah—are likely to see it...

...To be sure, Walzer is considerably less certain about the methods Israel has used in Gaza and Lebanon...

...Nonetheless, the main emphasis of Walzer's argument—especially in "Moral Considerations in the Lebanon War"—is to defend Israel against the increasingly widespread charges that its methods in both Gaza and Lebanon are not only "unjust," but constitute serious war crimes...

...This constraint, he acknowledges, "clearly applies to the Israeli attacks on power stations in Gaza and Lebanon...

...Emphasis in original)" The implication certainly appears to be that if Walzer were convinced that there was no true Israeli "departure" from Gaza, his position on both Israeli behavior and the Hamas reaction would be different...

...the severe restrictions on Palestinian drinking and agricultural water...

...However, they were joined by several pillars of the Israeli security establishment, who tended to focus on the pragmatic consequences to Israel's national interests of what Yossi Alpher (a former deputy chief of Mossad, director of Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, and senior adviser to Ehud Barak) agreed was the deliberate Israeli infliction of "humanitarian suffering in Gaza and Lebanon...

...In the last few months alone, Israeli shelling and bombing of Gaza, undoubtedly aimed at militants but inherently indiscriminate, have killed more than a hundred innocent civilians...

...Jon Lee Anderson, "The Battle for Lebanon," New Yorker, August 7 and 14, 2006...

...He is at work on a book on the United States and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict...

...In the past, I am sure, some Palestinian attacks were motivated by the experience of occupation," he acknowledges, "but that isn't true today...

...Some Hezbollah spokesmen DISSENT / Winter 2007 • 9 5 ARGUMENTS claimed that the July 12 raid was also designed to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, especially with its Palestinian counterpart, Hamas, which several weeks earlier had seized an Israeli soldier as a bargaining chip to force a prisoner exchange.' It is also worth noticing that the Hezbollah attack came the day after an Israeli air force strike on a three-story apartment house in Gaza City, directed against a Hamas activist but killing nine civilians, including seven children...

...Walzer has also been a prominent supporter of Israeli policy over the years...

...2 Consequently, life for the Gazan people is a misery: according to the most recent UN study, "the economy of the occupied 94 n DISSENT / Winter 2007 Palestinian territory is on the verge of collapse, with unprecedented levels of unemployment and poverty in both Gaza and the West Bank.' But suppose that the Israeli occupation and repression of Gaza had truly ended with the withdrawal of the settlements...

...So understood, the Israeli attacks are nothing less than state terrorism...

...There is yet another plausible interpretation of Hezbollah's intentions, which Walzer does not consider...

...Consequently, in the absence of a sweeping reevaluation within the Jewish community of its nearly unconditional support for Israeli policies in the Arab world, the march toward disaster will almost certainly continue...

...2. Ha'aretz carries almost daily stories on Israel's actions in Gaza...

...The terrorism issue aside, the key point is that for many years there has been an overwhelming international consensus—shared by most Israelis and Palestinians—that any final ARGUMENTS settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be based on the creation of a unified Palestinian state, not merely in Gaza but in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well...

...They know very well what the terrorists were doing .. . I had four villages in South Lebanon bombed . . . [as, he says, was done in Jordan...

...The importance of Gur's remarks is the admission that the Israeli Army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously...

...Although he is certainly not an uncritical one, it is sometimes difficult to reconcile his moral theories with his positions on Israeli wars and other uses of deadly armed force...

...Later in August, Amnesty International, perhaps the most important and respected international human rights organization, issued its own report, which also concluded that by violating international laws that barred indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, especially direct attacks on civilians, Israel had "committed war crimes" in Lebanon...

...For thirty years...

...7. Amos Harel, "Syria Still Transferring Supply of Rockets, Missiles to Hezbollah," Ha'aretz, August 13, 2006...

...As Walzer has emphasized, just wars must also be fought justly—meaning, above all, that there can be no attacks on innocents and the systems that support their lives...

...Here are just a few recent examples: Amira Hass, "Can You Really Not See...

...Even if it were true, though, it would not tell us anything about how this war should be fought...

...Danny Rubinstein, "A Commission to Investigate the Occupation," September 4, 2006...

...Still, even religious fundamentalists in general, and Hezbollah's leader Hasan Nasrallah in particular, are not necessarily so irrational as to be incapable of recognizing their basic interest in survival...

...In the most recent war in Lebanon, the facts of what Israel was doing were already clear by August 9, the date of Walzer's APN statements...

...Do you think I don't know what we've been doing all those years...

...and more...

...Is such resistance necessarily illegitimate...

...Should it be surprised that the armed resistance continues...

...The argument that roads and bridges were legitimate targets fares no better...

...Walzer's main argument, however, is that the overriding issue was not the Hezbollah attack, whatever its purpose, but the fact that for the past six years Hezbollah had been arming itself with increasingly more accurate and powerful rockets, which he argues had "no other purpose than an attack on Israel," and were therefore "meant to be used at some future time"—presumably in an unprovoked attack, out of the blue...

...There is currently a debate in Israel and elsewhere over whether the Lebanon War should be regarded, on balance, as a success in terms of Israeli security, on the grounds that the most dangerous rockets may have been destroyed, Hezbollah was militarily weakened and perhaps chastened, and an international peacekeeping force is being put into place...

...5. As has been argued by editorials and columns in Ha'aretz...

...There is no neat solution to the moral dilemma this poses, his argument continues: those who employ such tactics bear the primary responsibility for the ensuing civilian casualties, although it is also the case that the attacker must try hard to minimize those casualties...

...Yet, throughout its history and especially in Lebanon and the occupied territories, Israel has deliberately attacked innocent Arab civilians, either directly or by destroying their homes, their fields and orchards, their electric systems, their water resources, and their transportation systems...

...some of them bluntly stated that, as in Gaza, the Israeli government was deliberately causing mass civilian suffering, in order to generate pressures against the Lebanese government and to deter future civilian support or toleration of Islamic militants...