GAZA CITY, 23 October 2006 — Israel admitted for the first time to using controversial white phosphorus shells against military targets in southern Lebanon, an Israeli newspaper reported yesterday.
“The IDF made use of phosphorus shells during the war against Hezbollah in attacks against military targets in open ground,” Minister for Government-Parliamentary Relations Yakov Edery told lawmakers last week according to the Haaretz daily.
A spokeswoman for Edery confirmed the report. Edery was simply reading the army’s response to a query posed earlier by another Israeli lawmaker, the spokeswoman, Orly Yechzeken, told AFP.
“This is not his personal opinion,” she said. “This is what the military told us.” In his statement to lawmakers, Edery added that the army maintains that phosphorus shells are a legitimate weapon and not forbidden by international law. “The IDF used this type of munitions according to the rules of international law,” Edery reportedly said.
White phosphorus munitions cause severe burns and agonizing deaths. The chemical seeps into the bloodstream and causes respiratory problems and other ailments in victims, which has lead many to demand it be classified as a chemical weapon.
The International Red Cross and other human rights groups have long argued that phosphorus weapons should be banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention. US leaders went on the defensive after reports surfaced last year that American troops in Iraq had used phosphorus in the battle for Fallujah in 2004.
Meanwhile, several Israeli Cabinet ministers called yesterday for a military operation to retake control of Gaza’s southern border and prevent Palestinians from smuggling weapons from neighboring Egypt.
“Action must be taken without hesitation. Any hesitation is dangerous and we must act immediately,” Industry and Trade Minister Eli Yishai of the religious party Shas told reporters. “When we left the Philadelphi corridor, I said that abandoning it is a doorway to hell,” he said, using Israel’s term for the 12 km (7.5 mile)-long border zone.
Yishai’s call to move back into the corridor, more than a year after Israel pulled troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip, was echoed by two other Cabinet ministers, as well as a senior commander of military forces in the area.
Palestinian government spokesman Ghazi Hamad denounced the proposal as a potential ruse for an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza — something Israel has said repeatedly is not in the works. “The call to retake the border is a serious escalation and an incitement for more Israeli aggression,” Hamad said.
Israel is engaged in a massive offensive in Gaza aimed at stopping Palestinians from firing rockets into Israel. More than 250 Palestinians, half of them civilians, have died. Israel began its assault after Palestinian gunmen in the territory captured a soldier in Israel in a raid in June.
In the Gaza Strip, masked gunmen killed a senior member of President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah group, which is locked in a power struggle with the governing Hamas movement. Masked gunmen killed Mohammed Shahada at a pre-dawn attack in Al-Burij refugee camp in Gaza Strip.
— With input from agencies
