I just got around to a Human Rights Watch report on the use of cluster munitions during the Israel-Lebanon war. The map to the right appears in the report. Each red dot represents a cluster munition strike.
Throughout the war, Israeli artillery used relatively few cluster munitions. However, in the conflict’s final 72 hours Israel launched more than 800 cluster munition strikes into Southern Lebanon, around 90% of the total made during the conflict. I looked around for a good explanation for this dramatic change in strategy, but did not have much luck. I am not a military expert and so will let readers come to their own conclusions.
One parting fact, Human Rights Watch and others believe 25% of the Israeli submunitions (the little bombs dropped from the big bombs) malfunctioned, not exploding on impact, and litter the Lebanese countryside. The end result is that much of Southern Lebanon has been turned into ‘de facto landmine fields’, unusable for farming or herding.
Recently IRIN reported that the main office of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) was damaged in an Israeli airstrike. PMRS has photos of the damage on their website. The strike was in retaliation for more than 70 Palestinian rockets fired into Israel, one of which landed on the grounds of a local Israeli hospital. Neither the Palestinian nor Israeli attacks was officially targeting health facilities.
Why am I showing you this? Because damage to the health infrastructure is a primary cause of indirect morbidity and mortality during wartime. Despite myths to the contrary, dead bodies are not the catalysts of epidemics. Rather, it is the loss of health infrastructures (hospitals, clinics, etc…). When a region loses its health infrastructure it is unable to combat diseases endemic in the area, which quickly flare up. That is, in peacetime local health infrastructures keep local diseases in check through treatment and public health programs. When that infrastructure is destroyed, this check is removed and diseases spread rapidly.