So, glancing through Memorandum today, I see an article from the NY Times on war crimes and the current conflict in the Middle East.
The United Nations’ top human rights official said Wednesday that the killing and maiming of civilians under attack in Lebanon, Israel and Gaza and the West Bank could constitute war crimes.
The scale of killings in the region, and their predictability, could engage the personal criminal responsibility of those involved, particularly those in a position of command and control,” said Louise Arbour, the high commissioner for human rights.
Ms. Arbour is a former justice of Canada’s Supreme Court who, as chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, indicted the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.
International humanitarian law is clear on the supreme obligations to protect civilians during hostilities,’’ she said. That same obligation exists, she added, in international criminal law, which defines war crimes and crimes against humanity.
I went off and read the thing (the 4th Geneva Convention). You should too.
Like all contracts, the meaning isn’t completely in the text; there’s a body of law and interpretation that truly define what they mean.
So keeping that in mind, here are some key points (with my highlighting)…
Art. 2. In addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peace-time, the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them.
The Convention shall also apply to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, even if the said occupation meets with no armed resistance.
Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof.
OK, that pretty much commits Israel to honor them even if Hamas doesn’t…
Art. 3. In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:
(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons: (a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; (b) taking of hostages; (c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment; (d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.
(2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.
MMMkay, so there’s a distinction between those taking no part in the hostility and those who are…
Art. 5 Where in the territory of a Party to the conflict, the latter is satisfied that an individual protected person is definitely suspected of or engaged in activities hostile to the security of the State, such individual person shall not be entitled to claim such rights and privileges under the present Convention as would, if exercised in the favour of such individual person, be prejudicial to the security of such State.Where in occupied territory an individual protected person is detained as a spy or saboteur, or as a person under definite suspicion of activity hostile to the security of the Occupying Power, such person shall, in those cases where absolute military security so requires, be regarded as having forfeited rights of communication under the present Convention.
Mmmmmkay again, so it’s not meant to be a suicide pact.
In each case, such persons shall nevertheless be treated with humanity and, in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention. They shall also be granted the full rights and privileges of a protected person under the present Convention at the earliest date consistent with the security of the State or Occupying Power, as the case may be.
OK, so there remains an obligation to some measure of due care. And then there’s this:
Art. 28. The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.
Hmmm…so legitimate military actions within civilian areas – when those civilian areas are being used by combatants – are possibly not crimes.
I am glad to see people think about this question. I am not convinced Israel is following sound policy. I am certain this current limited action will bring no peace, but will set the stage for future conflict. This action by Israel may be necessary or, thought to be necessary be the leadership of Israel: yet innocent people are being killed. I think it important for the people of Israel to admit that without hedging or mitigating.
My URL ran afoul of some automated program, so I place it here for now. A little help please?
http://broadsunlituplands.word press.com/
It’s like the use of the word “torture”; “war crime” is being applied so readily and in such ridiculous circumstances that soon it will lose all meaning.
It’s been a while since I’ve read the relevant conventions but my impression was, as long as those making military strikes take reasonable precautions to ensure that as few civilians are killed or wounded as is practical, they are not committing crimes.
Since non-signatories to these conventions do not seem to have these restrictions, and since those they are fighting don’t sign them, what’s the point? It seems to me it’s going to be very hard to get anybody to sign these kind of conventions in future when they know their enemies are going to feel free to ignore them, and it’s only going to tie their hands and open the signatories up to baseless accusations such as these. I think this is the reason the US is so reluctant to join conventions any more. It’s sad.. the whole point of the conventions, to make war more humane, is being eradicated by those who scream so loudly about the inhumanity of war.
AL, IANAL, but if all goes well I will be in a few months.
Your reading of this sentence is in error:
Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations.
You read it as “that pretty much commits Israel to honor them even if Hamas doesn’t”
No, note the part I emphasized. If Israel were fighting Egypt (I assume they are a party) as well as Hamas, then Israel would have to honor the convention with respect to Egyptian soldiers (that is, in its relations with another party) but not with respect to Hamas, the non-party.
The point of that sentences is that the introduction of a non-party doesn’t mean “no holds barred,” it means “no holds barred with respect to the non-party”
Germany actually did exactly this with the predecessor to these conventions, more-or-less treating US soldiers well but treating the Red Army like dogs.
Furthermore, it isn’t clear that Hezbollah controlled territory in Lebanon really qualifies as the territory of a “party” since it isn’t really under Beruit’s control.
So far as my reading of international law is concerned, Israel can behead Hezbollians on live TV if they want. Now, I could be wrong, but then again I don’t define “international law” as “what Swedish NGOs want.”
I made this comment over at the adventures of Chester, but it applies here.
There are two interesting pages at Human Rights Watch website:
Hezbollah Rocket attacks designed to kill civilians
http://www.humanrightswatch.org/english/docs/2006/07/18/lebano13760.htm
And Questions about Lebanon
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/07/17/lebano13748.htm
This in the questions about Lebanon:
Was Hezbollah’s capture of Israeli soldiers lawful?
The targeting and capture of enemy soldiers is allowed under international humanitarian law.
However captured combatants must in all circumstances be treated humanely.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nassrallah has stated that the captured soldiers will be used to negotiate the release of Palestinian, Lebanese and other Arab prisoners from Israel. The use of captives who are no longer involved in the conflict for this purpose constitutes hostage-taking. Hostage-taking as part of an armed conflict is strictly forbidden under international law, by both common Article 3 and customary international law, and is a war crime. (end of quote from page)
SO THE INCIDENT THAT STARTED THE WAR WAS A WAR CRIME according to HRW.
THE HEXBOLLAH ROCKET ATTACKS ARE WAR CRIMES according to HRW.
It is also likely that the Hezbollah practice of HIDING IT LAUNCHERS IN CIVILIAN DWELLINGS, AND THEREBY ENDANGERING CIVILIANS, IS A WAR CRIME.
All the talk of proportionality without mentioning intentional and planned war crimes by one side.
Has anyone seen prominent mention of Hezbollah war crimes in the MSM?
OR BY THE UN
I’ve frankly always assumed that Hizbellah’s actions are generally of the class of criminal.
But what is a bit new now is Israel’s targeting of hospitals, soup kitches, and so forth — it all looks unsettlingly like Saddam’s campaigns of ethnic cleansing, except this time run by Israel against the Lebanese Shia.
When the US targetted hospitals and ambulances in Iraq, they at least had the decency to pretend those were mistakes, or pretend they weren’t happening. Israel isn’t even half-way denying that it is targetting large civilian populations, and more unsettlingly, as I saw, targetting the refugee roadways and the refugee healthcare in Beirut.
I mean to say, Israel is being surprisingly brazen in its flirting with ethnic cleansing.
Its reminiscent of not only Saddam, but several other major military powers which used collective punishment to the level of ethnic cleansing, but it is often considered bad taste to speak of this sadness.
Pete, you’re quite out of the deep end.
Targeting otherwise protected targets (hospitals etc.) is OK tactically and allowed by the norm if they are used for military purposes, something that the jihadis do commonly.
The infrastructure destroyed by Israel can also be used by Hizballah to resupply or to flee if they so decide.
This is no ethnic cleansing.
The first problem is figuring out who the civilians are.
A few observations. First,
while certainly true under a common law system like that in the United States isn’t universally true. That’s one of my gripes about international law: not all of the parties understand every law the same way.
Second, you can’t understand some of the confusion and disagreement going on right now completely in the context of the original Conventions of 1949. You’ve got to consider the subsequent protocols (particularly the second) and the convention of 1980 as well. The latter is what the Europeans and Kofi Annan, for example, are harping about.
But this latter point brings up a fundamental disagreement about international law. I think that international law is best understood as a collection of bilateral agreements. Not everybody sees it that way and those who don’t are attempting to impose protocols and conventions, at least in the court of public opinion, on nations that haven’t agreed to their terms.
No disagreements here, but Article 3 is in all of four of the Geneva Conventions (Common Article 3), so its actually easier to read it as a seperate treaty. It is the “catcher in the rye” for cases of armed conflict “not of an international character” as opposed to the more traditional armed conflicts contemplated in the conventions.
In other words,
if not international character, then Common Article 3;
if international character, then look to everything but Common Article 3.
I think the first mistake was reading the NYTimes and hoping for any form of objective analysis.
I don’t agree with the comments that suggest that its not fair that Israel must follow the Geneva Conventions when Hezbollah does not. That makes sense when we’re talking about how Israel treats captured members of Hezbollah (the Third Geneva Convention), but the people that are being protected in the Fourth Geneva Convention are civilians. If we are talking about illegal combatants, that’s another story.
And does anybody think this convention (1949) was written so as it would retroactively criticize certain bombing campaigns by the victorious parties of WWII? I don’t think so.
Roby Lyman (#3), you might be right about the highlighted provisions in Article 2, but I think the other ones are the important ones.
_the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them._
Israel’s ambassador to the U.N. has said that “Lebanon has no less than declared war on Israel.”:http://www.israelnewsagency.com/lebanonisraelhezbollahislamterrorismwar77480713.html Israel has bombed Lebanese army buildings. It would be hard for me to imagine that there is not an armed conflict between Lebanon and Israel at some level, even though Israel’s attacks are directed towards a specific group. But the next paragraph is probably the more important:
_The Convention shall also apply to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, even if the said occupation meets with no armed resistance._
Israel has partially occupied Lebanon. The “Red Cross commentaries”:http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/COM/380-600005?OpenDocument make sense to me here:
bq. _the wording adopted was based on the experience of the Second World War, which saw territories occupied without hostilities, the Government of the occupied country considering that armed resistance was useless. In such cases the interests of protected persons are, of course, just as deserving of protection as when the occupation is carried out by force._
Good points.
When talking about the 4th convention, note that the 1977 addendum is NOT unversally accepted, and has NOT been signed by the USA among others.
Conflation of the two is an expected opening tactic to be wary of among the “international law is whatever I make up” school on the Left.
The “original 4th convention can be found here.”:http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287a42141256739003e636b/6756482d86146898c125641e004aa3c5
Neither the U.S. nor Israel have agreed to be bound by the First or Second Protocol of the Geneva Conventions. Lebanon has.
Nonetheless, a number of international legal experts and four members of the SCOTUS believe that these protocols have become a part of a body of “international law” that non-signatories are bound by. You wonder why the Senate even bothered to refuse to ratify Protocol I.
PD,
Keep in mind that the point of these treaties is mutuality. If you treat our civilians well, we’ll treat yours well. Murder women and children deliberately, we’ll reply in kind. Dresden was payback for London (especially the V-1s and V-2s), which is why I can never get excited about it.
That may not be moral or right or a good idea, but to say the law is otherwise is to defeat the point of having the conventions. It’s all about the incentives. (Of course, MAD doesn’t work on madmen).
That was my point in mentioning the bilateral nature “international law”.
OK, now I’ve tracked down what Dave Schuler meant by European and UN concerns about “the convention of 1980.”
bq. _Lebanon’s Information Minister Ghazi Aridi has accused Israel of using banned weapons in violation of international law. Reports in the Lebanese media have claimed that Israel has used phosphorus incendiary bombs and vacuum bombs that suck up air and facilitate building collapses. The use of incendiary weapons against civilians has been banned since 1980. The U.S. military used similar phosphorous weapons during the siege of Fallujuah in Iraq._
“Source”:http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/18/1442233
Neither Israel, nor Lebanon, nor the United States are parties to the “Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons (Protocol III). Geneva, 10 October 1980.”:http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/TOPICS?OpenView#Methods%20and%20Means%20of%20Warfare
Here is a well-referenced article in the “Daily Star”:http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=74043 of Lebanon, which makes the international law case against Israel. From what I can tell, none of the complaints arise under a treaty that Israel has ratified.
I think that international law is best understood as a collection of bilateral agreements. Not everybody sees it that way and those who don’t are attempting to impose protocols and conventions, at least in the court of public opinion, on nations that haven’t agreed to their terms.
It seems to me it’s going to be very hard to get anybody to sign these kind of conventions in future when they know their enemies are going to feel free to ignore them, and it’s only going to tie their hands and open the signatories up to baseless accusations such as these. I think this is the reason the US is so reluctant to join conventions any more.
If you treat our civilians well, we’ll treat yours well. Murder women and children deliberately, we’ll reply in kind. Dresden was payback for London, which is why I can never get excited about it.
check out this video: http://tsoldrin.blogspot.com/2006/11/video-israeli-monsters-murder-women.html