http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=77432
Hizbullah rejects human-shield accusations Resistance says israel trying to cover up failures, atrocities Compiled by Daily Star staff Wednesday, December 06, 2006 Hizbullah on Tuesday dimissed a report by an Israeli think tank with strong ties to the military accusing the resistance of using civilians as human shields during the July-August war. The 300-page report - a study the authors say can be used to rebuff war-crime allegations over Israel's pummeling of residential areas - seeks to bolster claims that Israeli attacks against Hizbullah targets in populated areas did not violate international law. It says Hizbullah deliberately operated within civilian areas, raising the civilian death toll. "The whole report is fabricated," Hizbullah official Ghaleb Abu Zeinab told The Daily Star on Tuesday. He said that with the Israelis "it is not surprising to see such things. It is an attempt to cover for their failure in the war on Lebanon and the mistakes and atrocities they committed." The reasons behind this report "are obvious. They are trying to get rid of the responsibility of killing civilians and pinning the responsibility on someone else. The Israeli Army has never had any morals. They used all kinds of internationally banned weaponry against our civilians - including cluster bombs and phosphorous bombs. If they didn't want to kill civilians they wouldn't have used such weapons in the first place." The report includes documents, photos and video footage - billed as declassified, though much of it is similar to information that has appeared on television newscasts and the Foreign Ministry Web site. The New York Times said Tuesday a Hizbullah official denied the study's allegations, saying its military units were based outside towns and villages and had come into populated areas only when circumstances required it. "We tried to avoid having to fight among civilian areas, but when Israeli troops entered villages, we were automatically forced to fight them from inside these villages to defend it," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The study was prepared by a team led by military intelligence expert Reuven Ehrlich, a retired lieutenant colonel who now heads the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. The private think tank has close ties with the country's military leadership and maintains an office at the Israeli Defense Ministry. It compiled the report in conjunction with lawyers from the army and the Foreign Ministry. "I think it could offer a response to allegations of human-rights organizations on why the Israel Army operated in civilian areas," Ehrlich said. The report says Hizbullah operated from civilian areas to deter the Israeli military and gain a propaganda advantage. The report says Hizbullah stashed weapons in hundreds of private homes and mosques, had fighters transporting missiles closely follow ambulances, and fired rockets from near UN monitoring posts. It also includes aerial photographs of what its authors say are Hizbullah bases, weapons and ammunition stores hidden within civilian population centers in southern Beirut, South Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. The use of human shields has implications beyond the Lebanon war, because other groups in the Mideast are doing the same, Ehrlich said. "It is a phenomenon relevant to Israel's confrontation with Hizbullah in Lebanon and in Gaza," he said, "and is something the US and others working against terror have to grapple with." So far, no legal action has been taken against Israel in connection with its wartime actions, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. But ministry lawyers have prepared to defend government officials or military officers, should they be indicted. Three chapters in the report by Ehrlich's team could be used to build an Israeli case, if necessary, said Danny Grossman, Israel director of the American Jewish Congress, which was involved in the report. Amnesty International and UN human rights experts have accused Israel of deliberately targeting civilian areas and indiscriminate use of cluster bombs, which scatter scores of tiny explosives over an area the size of a football field. Many of the small bombs failed to explode, in effect littering the South with thousands of land mines that have killed more than two dozen people since the end of the war. Israel says use of the bombs is permitted under international law. - The Daily Star, with AP +++ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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