Grapes of Wrath and the Qana Massacre

In April 1996 Israel was still entrenched in the “security zone” it had occupied in south Lebanon since 1982, fighting a running war with Hezbollah. After weeks of escalation, on 11 April Israel launched Operation Grapes of Wrath, declaring its aim was to pressure the Lebanese government to curb the guerrillas. Over sixteen days Israeli aircraft flew more than 600 raids and artillery fired some 25,000 shells, while warnings broadcast to dozens of villages drove more than one hundred thousand people from their homes in UNIFIL’s area of operation and Tyre. Hezbollah fired hundreds of Katyusha rockets into northern Israel; three Israeli civilians were seriously injured, and none killed.

On 18 April, after Hezbollah fighters fired mortars from a position near the village of Qana, Israeli artillery shelled the area — including the compound of the Fijian battalion of the UN peacekeeping force UNIFIL, where some eight hundred displaced civilians had taken refuge. More than one hundred people sheltering there were killed, and many more wounded; the most widely documented toll is 106. It was the single deadliest incident of an operation in which, according to Human Rights Watch, some 154 Lebanese civilians were killed and 351 injured.

Israel expressed regret but maintained the shelling had been a tragic error. The UN investigation, conducted by the Secretary-General’s military adviser and submitted to the Security Council on 7 May 1996 (S/1996/337), concluded that “the pattern of impacts in the Qana area makes it unlikely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of technical and/or procedural errors.” Human Rights Watch found Israel’s claim not to have known that hundreds of civilians were sheltered at the base “simply not credible,” and Amnesty International likewise concluded the attack was deliberate. The fighting ended with the April 26 Understanding between Israel and Hezbollah, and the UN General Assembly later affirmed Lebanon’s right to redress. No one was held accountable; a decade later, in 2006, Israeli bombs would kill dozens more civilians in the same village.