Human shields: ‘Every third house’ in South Lebanon is used by Hezbollah for military purposes
It was no accident that during Sunday morning’s Hezbollah barrage, the Israeli military warned residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate their homes noting that the Iran-backed terror group stores and fires rockets from civilian areas.
Flags of Hezbollah and Lebanon flying together. Credit: Arthur Sarradin
“Hezbollah stores their weapons everywhere, both between villages and within the villages themselves,” Sarit Zahavi, president and founder of the Alma Research Centre, told The Press Service of Israel.
“By and large, every third house in the Shi’ite villages of south Lebanon is used in some way by Hezbollah for military purposes, be it weapons storage, the entrance of a tunnel, or a launchpad for shooting rockets at Israel,” she explained.
According to the center’s research, Hezbollah’s command is primarily embedded in Beirut while much of its logistical facilities are in the communities of eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
Thus, rocket launchers, weapons stockpiles, munition factories, command and control centres, tunnel shafts, observation posts and other terror infrastructure are located in and around homes, schools, hospitals and mosques throughout Lebanon.
In addition, the Alma Centre shared with The Press Service of Israel a collection of videos since October filmed by Lebanese citizens showing Hezbollah firing rockets from inside residential buildings in various villages.
Muddying International Law
“Firing from populated civilian areas, which is in and of itself illegal in the eyes of international law, transforms those areas into legitimate military targets,”
Yifa Segal, an international law expert from the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told TPS-IL.
“Hezbollah, which is well aware of this, is deliberately endangering the lives of the civilians that it exploits in Lebanon,” she said. “The reason that Hezbollah does this is that as per international law, even when attacking a legitimate military target, there must be some sort of proportionality of response.”
Segal explained that international law stipulates that even though the terror group is embedded in civilian areas, collateral damage must be mitigated — a grey area of international law that Hezbollah exploits.
Hezbollah’s strategy, she told TPS-IL, is “to ensure that any Israeli response will result in as much collateral damage as possible so that Hezbollah can say that it was a war crime.”
Hezbollah’s doctrine of using human shields dates back years.
“Since the 2006 Second Lebanon War, Hezbollah has been entrenching itself in these areas and preparing for the next war with Israel. Hezbollah shoots from civilian areas in Lebanon towards civilian areas in Israel,” Zahavi told TPS-IL. “In order to solve this issue we need the international community to stand alongside us.”
An estimated 15,000 homes were destroyed and a further 130,000 were damaged during the Second War in Lebanon.
Segal noted that Israel’s response to Hamas and Hezbollah’s human shield tactics includes warnings to civilians both in Gaza and Lebanon of impending military operations, going above and beyond the requirements of international law.
“There is no law that stipulates this level of consideration. There is no other country that contacts civilians from enemy countries and requests that they leave the contact zone,” Segal stressed.
“In other cases [of terror groups fighting from civilian areas], no one raised any doubt about the fact that the guilty party was the terror group itself, and no army fighting such groups felt any need to take all of these additional steps,” Segal noted.
Nearly 80,000 Israelis were forced to evacuate their homes near the Lebanon border when Hezbollah began launching rockets and drones in October. Hezbollah leaders have said they will continue the attacks to prevent Israelis from returning to their homes. The attacks have killed 26 civilians and 19 soldiers on the Israeli side.
Since October 8, Hezbollah has launched more than 6,700 rockets and drones.
Israeli officials have been calling for Hezbollah to be disarmed and removed from southern Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Council resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
