Mine ban policy overview

Policy

The State of Israel has not acceded to the Mine Ban Treaty.

Israel did not make any statements on the Mine Ban Treaty in 2012 or the first half of 2013.

In November 2010, Israel reiterated its long-standing position that “regional circumstances prevailing in the Middle East prevent Israel from committing to a total ban on anti-personnel mines. Unfortunately, these regional conditions have not improved in recent years.”[1] Israel has said that “it is unable to disregard its specific military and security needs” and that “it cannot commit to a total ban on anti-personnel mines as they are a legitimate means for defending its borders against possible incursions such as terrorist attacks.”[2]

On 28 March 2011, Israel’s parliament (the Knesset) unanimously adopted the Mine Field Clearance Act. The law establishes a national mine action authority to manage the clearance of Israel’s “non-operational” minefields, but it does not refer to the Mine Ban Treaty or address the use, production, transfer, or stockpiling of antipersonnel mines.[3]

Israel did not attend any Mine Ban Treaty meetings in 2012 or the first half of 2013. It last attended a formal meeting of the Mine Ban Treaty in November–December 2004, when it participated as an observer in the First Review Conference in Nairobi.

On 3 December 2012, Israel abstained from voting on UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 67/32 calling for universalization and full implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty, as it has done in previous years. It was one of only 19 nations to abstain.

Israel is party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) and its Amended Protocol II on landmines. It submitted its annual national report for Amended Protocol II on 1 July 2013, as required under Article 13. Israel is not party to CCW Protocol V on explosive remnants of war.

Production, transfer, and stockpiling

Israel has said it “ceased all production and imports of antipersonnel mines in the early 1980s.”[4] It has dismantled its antipersonnel mine production lines.[5]

Israel declared a moratorium on the transfer of all antipersonnel mines in 1994 that was extended for three-year periods in 1996, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2008, and 2011. The current moratorium is effective until July 2014. According to Israel, the moratorium was declared in recognition of the “grave humanitarian consequences” associated with antipersonnel mines and “the need, in this respect, for self imposed state restraint.”[6]

On 31 December 2007, the Defense Export Control Act entered into force in Israel. The act “criminalizes, inter alia, any violation of the export without an export license or contrary to its provisions. This Act serves as Israel’s statutory framework for the implementation of its obligations under the CCW regarding restrictions and prohibitions on transfer and the Moratorium on any sales of [antipersonnel mines].”[7]

The size and composition of Israel’s stockpile of antipersonnel mines remains unknown, but it includes both hand-laid and remotely-delivered mines.[8]

Use

The NGO Mine-Free Israel estimates that there are approximately one million operational and non-operational mines laid in minefields covering more than 197,000 dunams (197 km²) in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.[9]

In August 2011, Bamachaneh, the journal of the Israel Defense Force (IDF), reported that the IDF laid antipersonnel mines in the Golan Heights along the border with Syria.[10] The mines were laid after hundreds of civilians entered Israeli territory on 15 May 2011 during the annual Palestinian commemoration of “Nakba Day,” apparently crossing through minefields uninjured.[11]

The ICBL denounced the mine-laying as “shocking” and “disgraceful.”[12] The president of the Mine Ban Treaty’s Tenth Meeting of States Parties issued a statement expressing concern.[13]

In 2012, no new use of antipersonnel mines by the IDF was reported, but Israel stated that “extended monitoring, fences and markings of the minefields” was undertaken by the IDF’s engineering corps.[14]

Policy

The State of Israel has not acceded to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Israel has not publicly articulated its views on joining the ban convention in recent years. In November 2011, it said that “instruments” on cluster munitions “may be more expansive, but nevertheless do not enjoy the support of many relevant states” a reference to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[1]

In 2009, Israel stated that it “shares the views of those states wishing to alleviate the humanitarian concerns that may be associated with the use of cluster munitions,” but said it “believes that this could be best achieved within the framework of the CCW [Convention on Conventional Weapons],” to which it is a party.[2] Israel is not known to have reevaluated its position since the 2011 failure of the CCW to agree on a draft protocol on cluster munitions, leaving the Convention on Cluster Munitions as the sole multilateral instrument on the weapon.[3]

Israel did not participate in the diplomatic Oslo Process that created the Convention on Cluster Munitions.[4] From 2000, when the CCW first began discussing cluster munitions, until mid-2008, Israel opposed any new rules or regulations for states on the use of cluster munitions, insisting that existing international law was sufficient. In justifying its use of cluster munitions in Lebanon in July and August 2006, Israel stressed that it did so in conformity with international humanitarian law. It said, “Both international law and accepted practice do not prohibit the use of…‘cluster bombs.’ Consequently, the main issue…should be the method of their use, rather than their legality.”[5]

Israel has never attended any meetings of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, even as an observer as other states not party have done.

Israel voted in favor of UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 68/182 condemning the Syrian government’s use of cluster munitions, on 18 December 2013.[6]

Israel is not party to the Mine Ban Treaty.

Use

Israel used cluster munitions in 2006 in south Lebanon against Hezbollah, in 1982 in Lebanon against Syrian forces and non-state armed groups (NSAG), in 1978 in south Lebanon, and in 1973 in Syria against NSAG training camps near Damascus.[7]

In January 2008, the Winograd Commission of inquiry appointed by the Israeli government to investigate the 2006 conflict reported that there was a lack of clarity regarding the acceptable or appropriate use of cluster munitions.[8] In October 2012, a senior Israeli military officer briefing foreign journalists on condition of anonymity reportedly stated that in any future war with Hezbollah, Israel’s cluster munition use would be “much reduced, significantly reduced,” compared to its previous use of the weapons during the 2006 conflict. According to the official, “Due to a whole range of considerations—legitimacy, our non-indifference to the treaty, effectiveness and other factors—cluster use is expected to be reduced in combat in the rural areas.”[9]

Production, transfer, and stockpiling

Israel has been a major producer and exporter of cluster munitions, primarily artillery projectiles and rockets containing the M85 dual-purpose improved conventional munition (DPICM) submunition equipped with a back-up pyrotechnic self-destruct fuze. Israel Military Industries (IMI) produces, license-produces, and exports cluster munitions including artillery projectiles (105mm, 122mm, 130mm, 152mm, 155mm, 175mm, and 203mm), mortar bombs (120mm), and rockets (EXTRA, GRADLAR, and LAR-160).[10]

In 2004, a representative of the company claimed that IMI produced more than 60 million M85 DPICM submunitions.[11] Historically it has concluded licensing agreements for the M85 with Germany, India, Romania, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US).[12] Based on lot numbers and production markings, Austria, Germany, Norway, and the UK have declared stockpiling 155mm artillery projectiles containing M85 submunitions in their Convention on Cluster Munitions Article 7 reports submitted in 2011. Israel transferred four GRADLAR 122mm/160mm rocket launcher units to Georgia in 2007. Georgia has acknowledged using the launchers with 160mm Mk IV rockets, each containing 104 M85 DPICM submunitions, during its August 2008 conflict with Russia.[13] State Party Chile declared possessing 249 of these rockets.[14] The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has reported that Israel has exported the LAR-160 rocket system to Venezuela as well as more recent exports of the EXTRA surface-to-surface missile system to Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, but it is not known if ammunition containing submunitions were included in these deals.[15]

Israel has also produced several types of air-dropped cluster munitions. The Rafael Corporation is credited with producing the ATAP-300, ATAP-500, ATAP-1000 RAM, TAL-1, and TAL-2 cluster bombs, as well as the BARAD Helicopter Submunition Dispenser.[16] In August 2011, Venezuela announced the “recent” destruction of Israeli-made AS TAL-1 cluster bombs belonging to its air force.[17] An air-dropped anti-runway cluster bomb called ARC-32 of Israeli origin has been reported in the stockpiles of Colombia.[18]

Israel has imported cluster munitions from the US, including M26 rockets (each with 644 submunitions) for its multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) launchers and 155mm M483A1 projectiles (each with 88 submunitions), both used in south Lebanon in 2006. The US has also supplied Rockeye cluster bombs (with 247 bomblets each) and CBU-58B cluster bombs (with 650 bomblets each).[19]

The size and composition of Israel’s current stockpile of cluster munitions is not known. Additionally, it captured and possesses Grad 122mm surface-to-surface rocket launchers, but it is not known if the ammunition for these weapons includes versions with submunition payloads.[20]

Israel also hosts a stockpile of US ammunition, which could be transferred to Israel in an emergency.[21] That cluster munitions were part of this stockpile was disclosed in a US Department of State cable in September 2011 released by Wikileaks that contained the claim that in 2008, US-manufactured cluster munitions with more than a one-percent tested failure rate “constitute greater than 60 percent of the overall” holdings of cluster munitions in the “pre-positioned War Reserve Stockpiles in Israel (WRSA/I).”[22] The Israeli officials reportedly warned the US that “unless the prohibition is lifted, Israel will have to revise its defensive doctrine, find a solution to the one-percent dud rate requirement for cluster munitions, and look to another type of weapon system on which to center its self defense strategy.”[23]

Contamination and Impact

The State of Israel is affected by landmines dating back to World War II and by mines that Israel later laid along its borders, near military camps and training areas, and near civilian infrastructure. The exact extent of overall contamination is not known.

The total area “not essential to Israel’s security” affected by mines is estimated at 128km².[1] This includes “minefields in the sea”—areas in the Dead Sea—estimated to cover 0.5km².[2] From the results of mine clearance projects, actual contamination is thought likely to cover between 5% and 10% less than this. In August 2011, Israel’s military reported planting new mines to reinforce minefields and other defenses along its de facto border with Syria in the Golan Heights.[3]

Mine Action Program

Israel’s parliament enacted a law on minefield clearance in March 2011 establishing the Israeli National Mine Action Authority (INMAA) to undertake a “comprehensive program of mines clearing projects inside Israel.”[4] The act said its aim was “to create a normative infrastructure for the clearance of minefields that are not essential to national security, and to declare them as free from landmines with the highest degree of safety to civilians, in accordance with the international obligations of the State of Israel, and within the shortest period of time possible.”[5]

INMAA was established in the Ministry of Defense with ministry staff responsible for planning mine action, while commercial companies were hired to conduct clearance using a separate supervising company to conduct quality assurance. INMAA also sets national standards “taking into consideration the procedures of the Israel Defense Forces [IDF] that will be as compatible as possible with the International Mine Action Standards.”[6] The IDF also conducts mine clearance according to “its own mine action plans that are executed by their military methods and techniques” and implements an annual program that includes maintenance of protection of minefields and suspected areas.[7]

Strategic Planning

Israel reports that INMAA has a multi-year clearance plan for 2014−17 that calls for clearance of areas in the Golan Heights and Galilee in the summer and in the Jordan Valley and Arava Plain in the winter, but gave no details. It said demining operations clear on average 1.5−2km² a year. Israel said INMAA would also manage projects in the West Bank that are funded by donations.[8]

Land Release

Israel released 2.2km² through clearance by commercial operators contracted by INMAA in 2013, bringing the total area cleared in the last two years to 3.3km².[9] The amount of land cleared or released by the IDF is unknown.

Clearance in 2013 (see Table 1) was split between northern and southern Israel. Eitan Lidor Projects cleared tasks in Majdal Shams and Had Nes in the Golan Heights, the north central area of Valley of Springs and around Eilat, and the Arava desert in the south. Israeli Mine Action Group (IMAG) cleared a little over 1km² in the vicinity of Sapir in the south. Quadro Mine Clearance undertook a small project on behalf of Roots of Peace at the village of Husan on the West Bank.[10]

Table 1. Mine clearance in 2013[11]

INMAA identified four clearance projects to be undertaken in 2014, including in the Arava Plain (0.8km²), the Valley of Springs (1.1km²), Upper Galilee (0.7km²), and in the West Bank (67,000m²).[12]

Support for Mine Action

INMAA has an annual budget of NIS27 million (approximately US$7.7 million) for mine action.

Casualties

Casualties Overview

In 2013, the Monitor identified two new mine/ERW casualties in the State of Israel. One soldier was killed in an accident during in a demining training course in the Golan Heights[1] and one civilian was injured when he stepped on a mine in an abandoned building in the Jordan Valley.[2]

In addition, in 2013 four Israeli soldiers were reportedly wounded in a landmine explosion while in Lebanon.[3]

From 1999 to the end of 2013, the Monitor recorded 13 mine/ERW casualties in Israel.[4]

Cluster munition strikes in 2006 caused 13 casualties in Israel.[5] No further casualties from cluster munition remnants have been identified.

Victim Assistance

The total number of mine/ERW survivors in Israel is not known. Mine/ERW survivors are not treated differently from other persons with disabilities. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Social Services is responsible for disability issues.[6] “Victims of hostile activities,” including mine survivors, are entitled to benefits, rehabilitation, and grants under the Benefits for Victims of Hostilities Law of 1970.[7]