Amnesty pushes for war crimes investigation into Israeli attacks

The human rights group Amnesty International has called for the Israeli army’s attacks on civilian infrastructure in Lebanon to be investigated as a war crime, Asharq Al-Awsat via AFP reported on August 26th.

Amnesty International’s research has found that from October 1st 2024 until late January 2025 “more than 10,000 structures were heavily damaged or destroyed during that time.”

Israel has continued to occupy southern Lebanon despite the terms of the November truce, which ended the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. The truce stated that Israel needed to withdraw military operations from southern Lebanon.

Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns, Erika Guevara Rosas, has said: “The Israeli military’s destruction of civilian homes, property and land in southern Lebanon rendered entire areas uninhabitable and ruined countless lives.”

The humanitarian group used a range of visual evidence to come to its conclusions – including 77 videos and photographs as well as satellite imagery. The videos often showed Israeli soldiers manually laying explosives inside homes and using bulldozers to tear down parks and religious sites.

The Israeli military has claimed some of these attacks on civilian infrastructure was necessary, stating that some of the infrastructure was used by Hezbollah fighters, or were used to store weapons, or were above tunnels.

However, Amnesty has nevertheless sounded the alarm on the attacks on civilian property. According to AFP, the NGO said: “The Israeli military’s extensive and deliberate destruction of civilian property and agricultural land across southern Lebanon must be investigated as war crimes.”

Amnesty’s call for a war crime investigation has coincided with scheduled meetings between US envoys and the Lebanese government as efforts to secure the disarmament of Hezbollah accelerate. Israel on June 6th said that it will continue to attack Lebanon until Hezbollah fully disarms.