The Israeli deputy Prime Minister has given an interview to Al Jazeera in which he gives a narrative about the use of cluster bombs in Lebanon last year.
This rather surprising medium for a response to Monday’s US criticism of their use is down to Perez being on a visit in Doha, capital of Qatar and home base of A-J.
This is what he said, somewhat in passing.
About the cluster bombs, to be short and clear we committed a mistake, regrettably. Apparently it was done without the knowledge even of the chief of staff.
This is rather disingenuous as I explain below the fold.
First a little further information from the subsequent A-J disussion which I have not been able to completely verify from net sources but which can from the Amenesty International member who compiled their report after visiting.
The first is that the failure rate of the bombs dropped on Lebanon was unusually high. Typically around 5-10% of the bomblets fail to go off but Amnesty had found this was around 40% in Lebanon. In some cases. the entire package had failed as this photo from the BBC page linked above shows:
Some of this appears to be down to the Israeli’s use of US cluster bombs in which the bomblets had no “self destruct” mechanism to avoid them becoming landmines. These were not however the ones shipped during the conflict that had caused so much disquiet at the time but in some cases the main cannisters had “use by” dates up to 30 years old. Obviously the age had made these weapons less efficient.
Now to return to Perez’s explanation. It is rather difficult to reconcile the “top brass did not know” excuse with the events at the time and the facts on the ground (or in the trees). Although most of the cluster bombs were dropped in the last three days of the conflict and after the ceasefire had been agreed, Amnesty had warned Israel early on in the war about their use.
Neither does the “rogue elements in the military” idea fit well with the unexploded ordinance found. “cluster bomb” is somewhat of a misnomer as the munitions can be delivered in different ways. Evidence of three types of weapons have been found and the bomblets defused. From the latest Amnesty report I can find
In August and September 2006, Amnesty International researchers found unexploded BLU-63 sub-munitions from CBU-58B cluster bombs in a house in the village of ‘Ainata and in the courtyard of a house in the village of Rashaya al-Foukhar. CBU-58B cluster bombs are US-made. They each contain 650 BLU-63 bomblets and are air-delivered.
A vast quantity of unexploded BLU-63 sub-munitions were also found near Nabatiyeh, north of the Litani river, where Israel did not give any advance notice to the local population of its intention to launch air or artillery attacks.
Amnesty International researchers also found unexploded M42 and M46 cluster sub-munitions around the village of ‘Aitaroun. Both the M42 and the M46 cluster bombs are US-made and are delivered by artillery cannon.
A third type of US-made unexploded cluster sub-munitions found in south Lebanon is the M77, which is delivered by Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS). The rest were mainly Israeli-made M85.
You can see that Amnesty found the results of bombs being dropped from aircraft, shells fired from artillery and rocket launced cluster munitions. This points to different units within the Israeli army as well as the airforce all deciding separately and without the knowledge of the High Command to use cluster munitions. Further, somebody in the Air Force had decided to use them north of the Litani River when the purpose of these is to attack large troop movements and should not be used near civilian areas. Quite frankly it stretches the imagination that the massive cluster bomb attack on southern Lebanon in the closing hours of the war could have been unknown to the top brass.
Perez “plausible deniability” excuse could also be behind their failure to provide the mine clearing teams with maps of their usage. Amnesty is pressuring the Israelis to provide them. The delays are making them even more dangerous.
A UN official told Al Jazeera in Beirut that despite an intensive de-mining effort, only 19,000 cluster bombs have been cleared so far.
The onset of winter in Lebanon and damper conditions have led to the bombs becoming further embedded in the ground, rendering them similar to landmines.
Perez also had some interesting comments that perhaps revealed more about his atitute to democratic expression than he realised:
It is tragic when the streets are running the state. The state has to run the streets.
It is though perhaps his comments on Israeli nuclear weapons that should colour views on the reliability of his excuse about cluster bombs. Most analysists accept that Israeli has nuclear weapons, putting the number of warheads in the low (100-200) hundreds. To have kidnapped Mordechai Vanunu from the streets of Rome, imprisoned him for 18 years, 11 in solitary, and still to deny him freedom of movement for spreading fiction is a little extreme even for the Israelis. Here though is what Perez said about those nukes.
Israel never announced an ambition to produce bombs, Israel said we shall never be the first to introduce a nuclear bomb in the Middle East. Israel does not refer to the nuclear position as such, but as a psychological deterrent. We know that Israel is being suspected of having such an option, and we say suspicion is enough.
If you have suspicion which means you have a deterrent, and you don’t need more and let me say Ahmadinejad and the Iranians are saying they are not interested in nuclear bombs, they just want to enrich uranium I don’t know exactly what for. But then they are producing missiles of long-range, what for? If they are not going to have bombs what do they need the missiles for. It is like believing in Allah but not believing in Muhammad.
The old non-denial denial. But he goes further.
(Q)But there also other people that are concerned by the fact, as you say, that there is a suspicion that Israel does have a nuclear device, is it not time to just own up and say `we do have a bomb’?
(A)Why should we do it? We don’t have an ambition to have a bomb. Look our ambition is to see the Middle East free from wars and free from bombs not the other way round. Till now it has served a purpose, why should we go further than that.
You know Amr Moussa yesterday, the secretary-general of the Arab league, used to be the foreign minister of Egypt – we were rather friendly and he came over to me in reception and says `We’re such good friends Why won’t you take me to Dimona and show me what you are doing there?’ and I say `Are are you crazy, Dimona I will take you there and you will see that there is nothing there and you will stop being suspicious and stop being worried about war and I will be out of my job. I don’t mind that you are suspicious.’ And that is it we never went further than that, Israel never for example tried a bomb, never tried to test a bomb, the minute we reached the limit, or the purpose of having a deterrent we stopped.
John Pilger, respected and experienced British journalist wrote this prescient piece in May 2001.
As George Bush escalates the new cold war begun by his father, the attention of his planners is moving to the Middle East. Stories about the threat of Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” are again appearing in the American press, this time concentrating on Saddam Hussein’s “new nuclear capability”.
These are refuted by the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspectors have found no evidence that Iraq, in its devastated state, has a nuclear weapons programme.
The distraction, however, is vital. The only weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East are in Israel, an American protectorate. What is not being reported is that, as Israel’s hawks fail to put down the Palestinian uprising, their leader, Ariel Sharon, may well remove the country’s nuclear arsenal from its nominal strategy of “last resort”.
This prospect is raised in the current Covert Action Quarterly ( org), by John Steinbach, a nuclear specialist whose previous work includes the mapping of deadly radiation hazards in the United States. He quotes Israel’s former president Ezer Weizman: “The nuclear issue is gaining momentum [and the] next war will not be conventional.” From the 1950s, writes Steinbach, “the US was training Israeli nuclear scientists and providing nuclear-related technology, including a small ‘research’ reactor in 1955 under the ‘Atoms for Peace’ program”. It was France that built a uranium reactor and plutonium reprocessing plant in the Negev desert, called Dimona. The Israelis lied that it was “a manganese plant, or a textile factory”. In return for uranium, Israel supplied South Africa with the technology and expertise that allowed the white supremacist regime to build the “apartheid bomb”.
In 1979, when US satellite photographs revealed the atmospheric test of a nuclear bomb in the Indian Ocean off South Africa, Israel’s involvement, writes Steinbach, “was quickly whitewashed by a carefully selected scientific panel, kept in the dark about important details”. Israeli sources have since revealed “there were actually three tests of miniaturised Israeli nuclear artillery shells”.
It seems Perez’s assertion that “Israel never for example tried a bomb, never tried to test a bomb, the minute we reached the limit, or the purpose of having a deterrent we stopped.” can only be truthful if we add “Then we let the Apartheid regime test them for us.”
To be fair then, Perez assertion that the Chief of Staff was not aware of the cluster bomb use could just be true. Perhaps he was too busy fielding criticism of his alleged share dealing on the eve of the war to notice the decision being made by his colleagues.