Former CIA director and U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has accused Israel of engaging in "terrorism," leveling a charge against the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that's typically reserved for enemies of the Israeli state.
The Obama administration fixture, not exactly a favorite among antiwar activists, used the "terrorism" label to describe a suspected Israeli operation to rig pagers and walkie-talkies used by the militant group Hezbollah with explosives. The act of sabotage killed at least 37 people and injured thousands more across Lebanon, including operatives and civilians alike. The coordinated attacks, which preceded a wave of devastating Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon, have been widely attributed to Israel.
Speaking with CBS News on Sunday, Panetta said Israel's tactics risk engulfing the region in a full-scale war and expanding the scope of warfare into dangerous territory.
"The ability to be able to place an explosive in technology that is very prevalent these days and turn it into a war of terror, really, a war of terror — this is something new," Panetta said on CBS News Sunday Morning. "I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism. This is going right into the supply chain, right into the supply chain. And when you have terror going into the supply chain, it makes people ask the question, what the hell is next?"
Current and former intelligence officials have described the operation as part of Israel's efforts to gain "red-button" capability, or the penetration of an enemy that can be held in reserve long before activation, sowing chaos and paving the way for a broader offensive. The recent attacks on Lebanon threaten to further escalate an already dangerous situation into a regional war, and the U.S. is preparing for the worst by sending an unspecified number of reinforcements to support the 40,000 troops already stationed in the Middle East, the Pentagon announced Monday.
Israel and Hezbollah continue to trade blows by conventional means as well. Israeli missiles slammed into southern Lebanon on Monday morning, killing 356 people and injuring 1,200 others, according to Lebanon's Ministry of Health, in what Israel said was an effort to take out weapons hidden in residential buildings. The escalating attacks have forced around a million Lebanese to flee from the bombed areas. Hezbollah fired its own rockets and drones into Israel, with most of them falling into open areas or getting intercepted by Israeli defenses. At least one Israeli person was reported by Israeli media as injured. Previous attacks attributed to Hezbollah, including a July strike that left a dozen children dead, have led to the displacement of tens of thousands of people in northern Israel.
Israel did not tell the U.S. about its pager operation in advance of the attacks that began last week, perhaps fearing a "freak-out" by Pentagon officials who would "pull every lever they think they had to get them to not do it,” Ralph Goff, a former CIA official, told The Washington Post. Only after the first wave of attacks last Tuesday did Israel notify Washington that it was behind it all, according to U.S. officials.
In carrying out the operation, experts say that Israel, already under heavy criticism for its war in Gaza and deadly incursions in the West Bank, may have violated international treaties and protocols to which it is a signatory. Article 7(2) of the Amended Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons prohibits the use of booby traps, which Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, defines as "objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use."
"The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction," Fakh said in a statement.
Panetta, speaking Sunday, stressed the importance of stopping such forms of warfare from spiraling out of control.
"I think it’s going to be very important for the nations of the world to have a serious discussion about whether or not this is an area that everybody has to focus on," Panetta said. "Because if they don’t try to deal with it now, mark my word: It is the battlefield of the future."
