Why They Die: Civilian Devastation in Violent Conflict

5 | The Second Lebanon War

5 | The Second Lebanon War On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah’s Lebanese guerrillas crossed into Israel and attacked an Israeli patrol, killing three soldiers and kidnapping two others. In retaliation, Israel launched air strikes against Lebanon and imposed a naval blockade that began a bitter thirty-four-day war. During the war, Hezbollah ‹red nearly four thousand rockets at heavily populated areas in northern Israel, killing forty-three civilians. In response, Israel deployed more than seven thousand air strikes in Lebanon.Vital points of Lebanese civilian infrastructure were partially or completely destroyed. In the war’s ‹nal days, Israeli forces launched hundreds of thousands of cluster bombs, each containing millions of bomblets. These cluster bombs caused civilian casualties long after hostilities ceased. Following the war, Amnesty International (2007) con‹rmed 1,183 fatalities, one-third of them children , and 4,054 injured among Lebanon’s civilian population. In addition, 970,000 civilians—a quarter of the Lebanese population—were displaced. Israeli civilians were outraged; a torrent of criticism of Israeli leadership reverberated throughout the country, focusing on accusations of misguided military strategy and a failure to enhance national security (see, e.g., Greenwald 2006; Shavit 2006). The outcries led to the resignation of the top Israeli command (including the Israeli chief of staff) in January 2007 and the dismissal of the Israeli defense minister the following June. During the war, Israeli decision makers deliberated about the proper military actions against civilian targets in Lebanon. Such deliberation was revealed to the general public in the reports of an Israeli governmental commission convened to evaluate the conduct of political and military leaders concerning many aspects of the war. This commission, known as 76 the Winograd Committee, heard testimony from seventy-four witnesses and read the protocols of all cabinet and military command sessions and meetings concerning the war. In both its April 2007 interim report and its January 2008 ‹nal report, the committee recounted the rationale for launching military strikes against Hezbollah and the Lebanese civilian infrastructure . In this chapter, we examine Israeli leaders’ decisions to engage in a military campaign that caused extensive suffering among Lebanese civilians. Based on the testimony before the Winograd Committee, we focus on the leaders’ understanding of relationships between Lebanese civilians and Hezbollah as a basis for decisions made during the war. The Winograd Committee reports are limited as a historical record of the exact motivations and perceptions behind the attack. The Winograd Committee was an of‹cial Israeli body, and members were careful to protect Israel’s national security as well as its international reputation (Winograd Committee 2008: 79–80, 485). In addition, much of the testimony of top military of‹cers before the committee was withheld from public circulation . Despite these limitations, we believe that the Winograd Committee reports provide primary source material that reveals critical perceptions regarding targeting civilians in the course of the war. In this chapter, we identify one source of devastation to Lebanese civilians in perceptions among the Israeli leadership of the relationship between enemy combatants and Lebanese civilians. Several interpretations of the Israeli characterizations of enemy combatants and civilian noncombatants are offered. We ‹nd that such characterizations of our Model 1 regarding the castigation of civilians on the basis of their alleged complicity with the militant enemy. Yet the Winograd reports reveal that such denigration was contested among the Israeli leadership, open to multiple interpretations and disagreements. We do not seek to evaluate the war’s legitimacy or to engage in the debate regarding the“just cause”of either Hezbollah or Israel. Rather, we focus on the impact of Israel’s military engagement on Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure. We begin by summarizing major developments in identity studies, including recent advances on the normative dimensions of group af‹liation and perceived boundaries among the ingroup , the enemy, and other associated groups. This summary is followed by a brief history of the Lebanon War as well as discussion of our research methodology. We then employ identity theory as an analytical lens for examining Israeli leaders’characterizations of Hezbollah and Lebanese civilians during the deliberations regarding retaliation against Hezbollah and The Second Lebanon War | 77 the subsequent dissolution of group differences (in character) between Hezbollah and the Lebanese civilians. A Model of Identity-Based Conflict We believe that any complete understanding of protracted violent con›ict involving identity groups must draw on social scienti‹c studies of collective identity...