Last update - 00:00 19/11/2006
Analysis: What an IDF Chief of Staff should have known
By Meron Rapoport, Haaretz Correspondent
A commander of a battery of Israel Defense Force rocket launchers was amused on Sunday to hear a report that Chief of Staff Dan Halutz did not know where the ground forces were dropping cluster bombs, and that there had been violations of his orders not to use these munitions in populated areas.
A few days after the start of the second Lebanon war, a photo was published in the international media of an Israeli cluster bomb being prepared to be fired toward Lebanon. During the war, the Israeli press published many photographs of MLRS rockets being used against targets in Lebanon.
Although Halutz spent most of his military career in the air force, he should know that in every single rocket fired by the MLRS, there are 650 bomblets. He is also supposed to know that these munitions are considered "doom's-day weapons" to be used by the IDF in an all-out confrontation with Syria. Not knowing such details is like not knowing how many divisions are in the IDF.
Since Haaretz began reporting on the extensive use of cluster bombs by the IDF during the war, the army has maintained that it "employed methods and means that are permitted by international law." Now, according to the new version of events, it turns out that the chief of staff himself had issued an order not to use cluster bombs or insisted that they be used only in open spaces.
As a result the military advocate general (MAG) is expected to initiate a criminal investigation to find out how it happened that so many cluster bombs were dropped in populated areas, contrary to international law.
However, if the MAG's office is indeed launching such a probe, it should ask the commander in chief of the IDF how it is possible that he did not know where his officers and soldiers were dropping four million bomblets.
Why has the IDF begun admitting only now what Haaretz has already been reporting for a number of weeks? In the agreements with the United States regarding the procurement of these weapons, Israel promised not to use them in populated areas.