Willy Peter

15Jan09

It doesn’t help in the denial department if the folks you happen to drop white phosphorous shells on happen to be the actual United Nations.  Israel, which has denued or evaded questions on use of the chemical, hit a UN warehouse with white phosphorous shells on Thursday.  Other groups have seen Israeli artillery drop dozens of chemical shells into the Gaza Strip.  Greg Mitchell of Editor and Publisher reports:

In fact, the International Red Cross has stated that Israel is certainly using it and Israel’s response was a non-denial, a spokesman explaining that the military “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.” Foreign press cannot get to bottom of it due to Israel refusing journalists’ entry to Gaza.

The use of white phosphorus as an illuminating device only is okayed by international law but such use is extremely risky and banned for use in dense civilian areas. The fires it sets cannot be put out with the usual water or fire extinguishers.

Today, at least two United Nations officials have flatly declared that three or more white phosphorous shells were part of the attack today that set a UN building and compound ablaze in Gaza City.   …

Earlier this week The New York Times reported on growing civilian charges of white phosphorus use:

Luay Suboh, 10, from Beit Lahiya, lost his eyesight and some skin on his face Saturday when, his mother said, a fiery substance clung to him as he darted home from a shelter where his family was staying to pick up clothes. The substance smelled like burned trash, said Ms. Jaawanah, the mother who fled her home in Zeitoun, who had experienced it too. She had no affection for Hamas, but her sufferings were changing that. ‘Do you think I’m against them firing rockets now?’ she asked, referring to Hamas. ‘No. I was against it before. Not anymore.’

Also this week, AFP reported that medics in Gaza say they have treated more than 50 people suffering burns caused by controversial white phosphorus shells, a claim backed up by a report of the New York-based Human Rights Watch. And two Norwegian doctors, recently returned from working in the Gaza Strip, accused Israel of using the territory as a testing ground for a new “extremely nasty” type of explosive. Then there is today’s report by The Times of London from correspondent Sheera Franklin in Jerusalem:

Remnants of an Israeli white phosphorus shell, identified by the marking on the outer casing — M825A1 — have been found in the village of Sheikh Ajilin in western Gaza. Witnesses in Gaza said that the shell was fired on January 9 and was taken indoors as evidence. They recalled seeing thick smoke and smelling a strong odour in keeping with the garlic-like smell associated with white phosphorus.

Hebrew writing on the shell casing reads “exploding smoke” — the term the Israeli army uses for white phosphorus. Doctors who examined the shell said that it appeared to include phosphorus residue. Residents said that they suffered burns on their feet when they walked where the shelling had taken place.

Jane’s supplies the following information on the American-made M825A1 shell:

The 155 mm M825A1 smoke WP is a separate-loading base-ejection smoke-producing projectile. It uses a body virtually identical to that of the 155 mm M483A1 DPICM. The projectile has a 155 mm M483A1 DPICM aluminium ogive section and expulsion charge, a forged-steel modified M483A1 body and a threaded steel ring and aluminium body base. Inside the body is a hermetically sealed canister containing 116 WP (white phosphorous) saturated felt wedges, each 190 mm thick and separated into four quadrants of 29 wedges each. A 63.5 mm diameter burster charge containing approximately 45 g of Composition B runs the entire length of the canister’s centre cavity.In operation, the nose-mounted time fuze is set to function at a selected point during the projectile’s trajectory. When the fuze functions, it ignites a 51 g expulsion charge of M10 propellant which creates sufficient internal pressure within the ogive to push off the body base and eject the canister. The expulsion charge also ignites a 100 ms pyrotechnic delay, enabling the canister to be fully ejected from the carrier body before the burster charge (21.2 g of Composition A5) ignites to break open the canister and release the WP-saturated felt wedges. The total weight of WP in the wedges is 5.78 kg. A launch-activated safe-and-arm module from an M739 Point-Detonating (PD) fuze separates the forward end of the main burster charge from the heat-sensitive pyrotechnic-delay element. In less than 45 seconds from the moment they meet the air, the separated felt wedges start to burn…

Sounds like fun, except that the WP wedges burn on contact with air and cannot be quenched with water.   The burns inflicted upon unfortunate civilians coming into contact with WP are horrific.   The organization International Lawyers against Nuclear Arms (ILANA) has briefed the illegality of its use on civilian targets, as the US did in the 2004 Falluja, Iraq campaign:

 The killing of troops and civilians in the city of Falluja on November 8-11, 2004 occurred in an indiscriminate way and against a specific population, falling under the provisions of Article 7 of the Rome Statute, for whose purposes “crimes against humanity” are “murder, extermination, or other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.”  We define an “attack directed against any civilian population” as a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts referred to in paragraph 1 against any civilian population, pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack; “extermination” includes the intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population.

 

In the attack on the city of Falluja, on 8-11 November 2004, as pointed out by the RaiNews24 report, many war crimes can be identified – according to article 8 of the Rome Statute, in particular the employment of white phosphorus: even though it was employed as a “light-throwing substance”, its effects on the civilian population and on the insurgents fall under the protection of the article.

 

War crimes are:

- wilful killing;

- wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health;

- extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly;

- other serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict, within the established framework of international law, namely, any of the following acts:

- intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities;

- intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives;

- intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;

- attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives;

- killing or wounding a combatant who, having laid down his arms or having no longer means of defence, has surrendered at discretion;

- killing or wounding treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army;

- employing poison or poisoned weapons;

- employing weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare which are of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering or which are inherently indiscriminate in violation of the international law of armed conflict, provided that such weapons, projectiles and material and methods of warfare are the subject of a comprehensive prohibition.

 

The US has not signed the Rome Statute.  Neither has Israel.  Most nations have, and it is part of the customary law of nations.  The fact that the US and Israel has not signed the Rome statute is not carte blanche to drop this weapon on civilians:

 

White phosphorus, the chemical compound that is the object of this statement, just like many other chemicals that are or are going to be on the market and still don’t have a precise name or coding, is neither prohibited in itself nor is expressly referred to in the “Convention on the prohibition of the development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons and on their destruction” (Paris, 13 January 1993). As a matter of fact, although it is not mentioned in the three “Tables of the chemicals”of the Convention, we must take into account that “for the purposes of this Convention” – as the Annex on chemicals states (B. Tables of chemicals, first paragraph) – these tables identify the chemicals that are object of the verification measures in accordance with the provisions in Annex on Implementation and Verification. According to Article II, Section (1a), “the Tables are not a definition of chemicals”.

 

The same notion is highlighted in the first part of the Convention (Article II, Definition and criteria) where it says: “For the purpose of implementing this

Convention, toxic chemicals which have been identified for the application of verification measures are listed in Schedules contained in the Annex on Chemicals”.

 

Therefore, the point is not the nature of the weapon (incendiary, light throwing or biochemical weapons) but the WAY IN WHICH THE CHEMICAL HAS BEEN

USED. We can’t play with definitions and change the brand of a product to put it on the market for a while (as in the case of Napalm and MK77) until it is outlawed.

 

WARFARE HAS ALWAYS BEEN GIVEN RULES. However, these rules proceed at a slower pace than technology and this is the reason why lawmakers write

comprehensive provisions instead of giving a list of prohibited chemicals (that can be too easily gone round) and prefer to focus on the effects they can produce and condemn everything that wilfully and systematically causes great and unnecessary suffering and serious injuries to human beings (people and animals) and jeopardize the environment.

 

The defense of this war strategy in the military campaign in Iraq based on the employment of white phosphorus can’t be based on the “exclusivist” principle. On the contrary, not all of the chemicals not expressly referred to in the tables can be employed with impunity in wartime because, as we have already seen, the tables are not a list of prohibited chemicals but, in line with the spirit of the  Convention itself, “of the sole chemicals that are object of verification measures”.

 

We want to highlight once again that if a toxic chemical is not mentioned in the Convention, its employment is not automatically lawful. With regard to this, we recall that (Article II – Definition and criteria, Section (2)), “Toxic Chemical” means: “any chemical which through its chemical action on life processes can cause death, temporary incapacitation or permanent harm to humans or animals. This includes all such chemicals, regardless of their origin or of their method of production, and regardless of whether they are produced in facilities, in munitions or elsewhere”.

 

 

 

 

 

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