Total Limited War (or maybe Limited Total War)

Among the many casualties of the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon is the environment. The massive assault by rockets, bombs and artillery lay waste to the land along with its people. Little noticed by the mainstream press is the oil spill on Lebanon’s coastline caused by Israeli airstrikes on an oil storage facility. A Google (Lebanon + oil spill) search yields plenty of articles about the spill but the closest to a mainstream medium is an AFP report in Yahoo! News. The rest are from alternative media. It seems that this particular tragedy is simply not worth mention in the daily litany of death and destruction that befalls the Lebanese in this latest war.

In context, the environmental costs of this war do seem to pale compared to the human toll. On the day after Israeli bombs killed 57 civilians (mostly women and children), a civilian death toll approaching 600 and a quarter million displaced Lebanese, the less dramatic threat to the marine environment seems a lesser priority. But it is still a cost of the war and, I wonder, exactly what that oil storage facility had to do with the rockets that endangered Israelis.

The answer lies in collective punishment. Israel is holding an entire nation hostage in its campaign against Hezbollah. One Israeli general famously said that if the Lebanese what air conditioning to work or travel to Paris, then they need to get their heads out of the sand and reign in Hezbollah forces on the border. (Sorry, I don’t have the link to the quote but it’s sufficiently well known that I am comfortable paraphrasing it.) Juan Cole summed up the issue early on.

[T]his is my problem with Israel's war on Lebanon. The [Israeli] government wants to clean Hizbullah's katyusha rocket emplacements out of the area above its northern border with Israel. That may or may not be a realistic goal.... But it is legitimate for the Israeli government to fight Hizbullah and to attempt to destroy the missiles, once Hizbullah showered Israel with missiles (and even though the missiles have mostly failed to hit anything).

But the Israeli military from the beginning of this conflict did not limit itself to fighting Hizbullah or to hitting its arsenal. The Israeli air force bombed Beirut airport ...and bombed the sea ports of Tripoli, Jounieh, Beirut, Sidon and Tyre. It bombed civilian neighborhoods and villages and killed whole families.

[...]

Israel has fought a lazy war, both morally lazy and militarily lazy. It is work to surveil enemy shipments. So, you just blow up the airport and the ports and roads and bridges, regardless of whether you have reason to believe that any of them is used by Hizbullah for their war effort. Just in case. It is a just in case war. You bomb Shiite villages intensively, just in case they have military significance to Hizbullah. Maybe they don't, and you've just blown up a civilian neighborhood and killed whole families. Where blowing up things has no immediate and legitimate military purpose and harms innocent civilians, it is a crime. It can be prosecuted, especially in Europe.

[...]

That is collective punishment. It is holding millions of innocents hostage and threatening them with death. It is state terror. I don't think the Israelis get it.

In the end, it all comes down to a complete failure of humanity. The imperative of war inexorably creates its own logic that pushes all other considerations. At least one Israeli recognizes this. Gideon Levi writes in Haaretz (hat tip to Billmon)

Since we've grown accustomed to thinking collective punishment a legitimate weapon, it is no wonder no debate has sparked here over the cruel punishment of Lebanon for Hezbollah's actions. If it was okay in Nablus, why not Beirut? The only criticism being heard about this war is over tactics. Everyone is a general now and they are mostly pushing the IDF to deepen its activities. Commentators, ex-generals and politicians compete at raising the stakes with extreme proposals.

Haim Ramon "doesn't understand" why there is still electricity in Baalbek; Eli Yishai proposes turning south Lebanon into a "sandbox"; Yoav Limor, a Channel 1 military correspondent, proposes an exhibition of Hezbollah corpses and the next day to conduct a parade of prisoners in their underwear, "to strengthen the home front's morale."

It's not difficult to guess what we would think about an Arab TV station whose commentators would say something like that, but another few casualties or failures by the IDF, and Limor's proposal will be implemented. Is there any better sign of how we have lost our senses and our humanity?

War offers few truths. One is that people die. Another is that killing civilians is ALWAYS wrong.