Civilian toll puts focus on Israel's response

JERUSALEM — The images from Qana, Lebanon, of medics carrying the bodies of pajama-clad children from the site highlighted a fundamental question hanging over the three-week campaign:

Is Israel's overpowering military action against Hezbollah a reasonable response to the militant group's July 12 ambush, in which two Israeli soldiers were captured and three killed?

There's little disagreement that Israel had every right to retaliate, and to counter Hezbollah's continuing attacks. But in the weeks of fighting, hundreds of Lebanese civilians have died.

At least 548 Lebanese have been killed since the fighting began three weeks ago, according to The Associated Press, including 477 civilians, 25 Lebanese soldiers and at least 46 Hezbollah guerrillas. The health minister says the toll could be as high as 750.

In all, 56 Israelis have died: 37 soldiers and 19 civilians killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks.

The civilian toll has sparked criticism from some world leaders, aid agencies and human-rights groups who view Israel's response as unwarranted and counterproductive.

"Carelessly seeking immediate tactical advantage at the cost of major strategic risks and penalties is stupid and dangerous," Anthony Cordesman, a former U.S. Defense Department analyst who's now a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote this week. "Creating more enemies than you kill is self-defeating."

For Israel, the calculus is simple: Hezbollah isn't just a troublesome militant group, it's the vanguard of the nation's most formidable Middle East enemies, Iran and Syria.

Because Hezbollah is part of that larger threat, Israel says, it's justified under international law in its efforts to get its captured soldiers back and in attempting to eliminate the group altogether. Their response shouldn't be measured only against the July 12 raid, Israelis argue, but against the total threat it faces.

"What is proportional?" asked Meir Rosenne, a longtime Israeli diplomat and expert on international law. "When you kill 10 Jews? 100 Jews? 1,000 Jews?"

Israel, Rosenne said, "is 100 percent entitled to act in self-defense to take the actions it has taken" to defeat Hezbollah.

"You are not lifted of the responsibility to distinguish between civilians and fighters."

Israel blames Hezbollah — which fires its rockets from Lebanese towns and villages — for violating international law, which bans using civilians as human shields.

But international law also requires the attacker to weigh whether the price to innocent civilians will outweigh a strike's military advantage.

Complicating Israel's position is the changing nature of Hezbollah. In the past 24 years, it has transformed itself from a radical band of Shiite Muslim militants into a sophisticated religious, political and social movement that gives voice to the frustrations shared by many of Lebanon's roughly 1.7 million Shiites.

The United States and Israel list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, but it also has matured into a mainstream political force in Lebanon.

Politicians allied with Hezbollah have two seats in the Lebanese Cabinet and 23 seats in the 128-member Parliament.

These days, Hezbollah is riding a surge of popularity and has acquired increased influence in the Lebanese government and its component factions, according to senior Lebanese officials and analysts.

In Qana, Israel originally contended Hezbollah was firing rockets from near the apartment building that was bombed. Israel released video of Hezbollah rockets being fired from Qana two days before the airstrike but offered no evidence to support its claim that rockets were fired at the time of the strike.

Indeed early today, the Israeli military acknowledged the Qana bombing was a mistake and said it would not have attacked had it known civilians were inside the building.

But even if Hezbollah had fired from the area, Israel still would have to weigh the costs to human life against the military gains, experts said.

And Israel's contention that it gives civilians plenty of time to escape by dropping thousands of fliers across southern Lebanon, urging people to leave, doesn't impress some experts.

Fred Abrahams, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said that doesn't relieve Israel of its responsibility to ensure each airstrike avoids civilian deaths as much as possible.

"You cannot say, we warned you to leave the area south of the Litani, and then you can assume everyone who is left is a fighter," he said.

Even if the civilian deaths are justified, they may not be smart policy, said Sarah Sewall, an expert on humanitarian law at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Such tactics may anger allies around the world and alienate Lebanese civilians caught in the middle.

"If Israel's intention is to disable Hezbollah's military capability, [it's] ... actions seem to be counterproductive," Sewall said.

Hannah Allam in Beirut contributed to this report.