NYT: U.N. Report Criticizes Israel for Actions at Border

July 7, 2011

U.N. Report Criticizes Israel for Actions at Border

By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM -- A new United Nations report that has been distributed to members of the Security Council strongly criticizes Israel for using live fire against unarmed demonstrators who tried in May to breach its border fence from Lebanon. Israel is planning to respond in detail shortly in a letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, officials here said Thursday.

The United Nations has been a frequent battleground for Israel, whose diplomats are currently working to oppose a bid by the Palestinians for international recognition of statehood at the Security Council and the General Assembly this fall.

The report states that Israel first issued verbal warnings and fired into the air before directing live fire at the mostly Palestinian protesters, killing seven civilians and injuring 111. But other than firing in the air, it said, Israel did not employ "conventional crowd control methods or any other method than lethal weapons against the demonstrators."

More broadly, the report deals with violations of Security Council Resolution 1701, [1] which underpinned the cease-fire in the summer of 2006 that ended a monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant organization.

Israel violated the resolution during the events on the border on May 15, [2] the report says, noting the lethal force used by Israel was not commensurate to the imminent threat to Israeli soldiers and civilians.

The protesters also violated the resolution, it says, because of their provocative actions, including when about 1,000 protesters broke off from the main demonstration and "threw stones and two petrol bombs across the fence and attempted to climb it and bring it down."

Up to 10,000 demonstrators arrived at the border area for Nakba Day, when Palestinians commemorate the "catastrophe" of Israel's founding in 1948. The protests were organized by Palestinian and Lebanese organizations, including Hezbollah.

Israeli officials have hinted anonymously that some of the casualties were caused by Lebanese Army soldiers who also opened fire. The United Nations report does not attribute any of the deaths to the Lebanese forces in the border area, saying the Lebanese Army attempted to control the crowd "using batons, tear gas and heavy firing in the air."

Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, a spokeswoman for the Israeli military, said on Thursday that the Lebanese forces used live fire, but that it was impossible for Israel to determine the number or source of the casualties since the bodies were all on the Lebanese side of the fence.

A senior Israeli military official said on Wednesday that since the May 15 border confrontation, and a subsequent deadly confrontation [3] on June 5 along the frontier between Syria and the disputed, Israeli-held Golan Heights, Israeli forces had been provided with more nonlethal equipment in order to reduce fatalities in any future episodes of this kind.

The official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity in line with army rules, added that Israel was sorry for the loss of life.

Activists in Lebanon canceled plans to march to Israel's northern border again on June 5, on the anniversary of the start of the 1967 Middle East war, after Lebanese authorities declared the area a closed military zone.

Israeli anger over the new United Nations report seemed mostly directed against its author, Michael Williams, the United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon.

An Israeli official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue, said that Israel would not boycott Mr. Williams, who periodically visits here to meet with officials, but that Israel had decided "to take some distance from him for a while."

Tensions between Israel and Mr. Williams have been running high since May. Soon after the Nakba Day events, Mr. Williams was quoted during a visit to Beirut saying that he was "shocked by the number of the deaths and the use of disproportionate, deadly force" by Israeli soldiers against "apparently unarmed demonstrators."

Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said at the time that the "overhasty statements" by Mr. Williams were "aggravating." He added that Mr. Williams "would have been better advised to wait for the results of investigations conducted by Unifil," the peacekeeping force in Lebanon.

The new report was based on the findings of Unifil's investigation.

Dan Bilefsky contributed reporting from New York.

[1] https://www.un.org/press/en/2006/sc8808.doc.htm

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/16/world/middleeast/16mideast.html

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/world/middleeast/06mideast.html