Jan 14, 2009 1:40 PM

Israel Accused of 'War Crimes' for Phosphorus Shells

International watchdogs are calling the Israeli use of white phosphorus shells in Gaza a "war crime." Could they be right? Calls for an international war crimes investigation in Gaza are getting louder, especially over the issue of white phosphorus (WP) shells. A senior United Nations source tells the Guardian newspaper that they were compiling evidence […]

International watchdogs are calling the Israeli use of white phosphorus shells in Gaza a "war crime." Could they be right?

Calls for an international war crimes investigation in Gaza are getting louder, especially over the issue of white phosphorus (WP) shells. A senior United Nations source tells the Guardian newspaper that they were compiling evidence of war crimes. The Israeli Defense Forces are pulling together counter-evidence -- and standing by their use of WP. On Tuesday, the Israeli military spokesman said that it "wishes to reiterate that it uses weapons in compliance with international law, while strictly observing that they be used in accordance with the type of combat and its characteristics."

White phosphorus was first used as a weapon by Fenian terrorists in the 19th century. Although it can be used as an incendiary, these days WP is more commonly used to produce smokescreens as it produces very thick white smoke. (A notable exception was in the 2004 action in Fallujah, where U.S. artillery carried out "shake and bake" fire missions using a mixture of WP and high explosive shells to drive insurgents out of cover and kill them.)

In Gaza, even the Red Cross accepts that the intention is probably to use WP to create smoke rather than to deliberately injure; the Associated Press quotes the ICRC's Peter Herby as saying: "It's not very unusual to use phosphorus to create smoke or illuminate a target. We have no evidence to suggest it's being used in any other way."

WP causes terrible injuries, burning right through skin and flesh.
It is not classed as a chemical weapon, and as Jason Sigger points out,
WP smoke rounds are not classed as an incendiary weapon either. This is because the 1980 Geneva Protocol on Incendiary Weaponsspecifically does not cover "Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signaling systems."

The weapons involved are likely to be U.S.-supplied M825A1 155mm artillery rounds, each of which scatters a hundred and sixteen wafers of WP-infused felt over a wide area. Using felt rather than pure WP ensures slower burning over several minutes rather than just a cloud of instant smoke that rapidly disappears. The M825A1 scatters its payload over an area between 150 and 250 meters in diameter.

So, by this logic, there are no incendiary weapons being used and no case to answer. However, the case put forward by Human Rights Watch and others is not that WP is an incendiary, but that its use "violates the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life." This looks like a reference to a different treaty, the 1949 Geneva Protocol, which has a section on "General protection against effects of hostilities":

*(ii) take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and methods of attack with a view to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects; *

There are strong indications that the WP rounds are causing civilian injuries. The* L.A. Times* reported one dead and dozens injuredin
Southern Gaza by what appears to have been a white phosphorus attack.
Witnesses describe a shell bursting and scattering burning objects:
"One landed on Mayar, my baby daughter. It was like a block of fire, a piece of plastic on fire. When I knocked it off her, it exploded and out came this heavy white smoke with a very bad smell."

Associated Press reporters described seeing patients in Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis with severe burns.
These may have been caused by WP, or by something else. Neither of these cases can be confirmed as being phosphorus without a chemical analysis -– which, of course, is not available.

WP victims have more to worry about than agonizing burns. Getting burned also means absorbing highly toxic phosphorus compounds. In
Vietnam, there were reports of sudden death the next day in WP burn victims who had only suffered 10% burns. The cause of death turned out to be hypocalcaemia (low calcium in the blood), caused by phosphorus poisoning.

Residents of Gaza may not be the only ones who have to worry about WP. "Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday
fired their first phosphorus shell into Israel, which exploded in an open area in the Eshkol area in the western Negev," *Ha'aretz *reports.

Medical and forensic evidence will show whether WP is harming civilians — and then the legal arguments can start about what "feasible precautions" mean in this type of military action.

[Photo: AP]

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