The U-word

Did Israel use uranium munitions in Lebanon, and if so what are the potential hazards? In Beirut, Serene Assir reports on a controversial scientific debate


As seen from Lebanon, it's been an intriguing few weeks in the debate on radiation. Questioning intensified regarding what kind of weapons Israel had used during its massive summer bombing campaigns in Lebanon, and whether that list included any illegal weapons. All throughout, chief amongst the concerns were the use of uranium-based munitions.

Pending the release of a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report on the effects of the recent 34-day war on the Lebanese environment -- expected to detail, for instance, the magnitude of the now notorious oil spill from the Jiyye power plant -- very little information has been imparted by the agency on its findings. But after the London Independent newspaper published the findings, on 30 October, of a top radiation scientist, Chris Busby, British scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, indicating it was likely that uranium-based -- possibly enriched uranium -- weapons had been used, UNEP responded by issuing a statement in which it indicated that its team had found no evidence of any such thing.

"The samples taken by the UNEP scientists show no evidence of penetrators or metal made of DU [Depleted Uranium], nor enriched uranium nor higher than natural uranium content in the samples," reads the 7 November statement, attributable to UNEP Executive Director and UN Undersecretary General Achim Steiner. It also indicates that all remnants of weapons found by the UNEP team visiting Lebanon were of well-known design. "The team had 32 samples analysed at a reputable laboratory in Switzerland," it adds.

Both Busby and Lebanese radiation safety officer at the American University of Beirut Azmi Imad warn that for a thorough, conclusive investigation into whether or not uranium-based munitions have been used in a given area, time is required. "Teams doing this kind of investigation need at least three months," said Imad. On this point, worthy of note is the fact that the team's work in Lebanon began 30 September and was completed 21 October, according to the UNEP statement. "Teams also require sophisticated equipment, lots and lots of samples, and, crucially, they need to know where to get them from. In Kosovo, for instance, maps were provided to search teams by those who had fired them, enabling searches to be focused," added Imad.

In this case, the likelihood of such maps being provided is extremely small, given the fact that Israel has denied reports of the use of uranium-based weapons in Lebanon. As it is, it took Israel almost three months to admit it used white phosphorus weaponry in Lebanon -- though, given the nature of burns in casualties in south Lebanon, the matter had become almost blindingly obvious. Farmers interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly -- for instance in Aayta Shaab -- regularly point out areas where rockets filled with phosphorus powder were used, weeks before any admission was made by Israel. UNEP's statement indicates that Israel did indeed use phosphorus weapons.

For lack of more leads perhaps, following information imparted by a wartime Daily Star article claiming that a uranium- containing bomb had been used in Khiam, Busby's team indeed found a soil sample taken from the very same bomb crater containing "significant amounts of enriched uranium". His preliminary report, co-authored by Dai Williams adds that "enriched uranium is not natural and does not exist in the environment, unless it has been put there by human activity." According to Imad and Busby, while uranium is found in the environment, it is the ratio of different uranium isotopes to each other in a given sample or area that determines an anomaly. "The existence of a high amount of total uranium and the enrichment signature in the sample LS6 [taken at Khiam] must be a consequence of its use in the weapon that made the crater," Busby's report reads.

As for the mutually contradictory nature of the information on the possible use of uranium-based weaponry in Lebanon, UNEP's communications department declined to answer further questions on the matter pending the release of the final report due in mid-December. According to Imad, the problem may be related to scientific approach. "My son was asked in science class not long ago whether, if he found dead cells on another planet, he could assume there was life on the planet. He answered by saying he would need more time to investigate before being able to conclude," he said. "The teacher told him he was wrong. He had wanted him to focus on the fact that the cells were dead to say that there was no life on the planet."

Perhaps the second approach -- the teacher's approach -- is comparable to UNEP's, not because it hasn't found samples containing abnormal uranium isotope ratios, but rather because it has chosen to make conclusions based on a fieldwork study that lasted less than a month. Unlike cluster munitions or even phosphorus, part of the problem with uranium is that it is invisible, and that any effects it may have in future will take time to surface.

For Busby, "It is normal in military related science to have such contradictions since the contamination of civilians, if proved, would lead to massive political repercussions and possible war crimes trials and at the least litigation." Should uranium in unnatural quantities be found in areas of south Lebanon and not cleared, then the likelihood of it causing eventual serious damage to civilians living in the vicinity of where a given rocket has launched could be great. A World Health Organisation report (dating to 2001), says that depleted uranium would have to be ingested in very large quantities for it to cause any harm, "The report is fairly accurate," says Imad, "but it needs to be understood that people living in the vicinity of high uranium radioactivity should be concerned because the longer you are exposed to it day in day out, the greater the health hazard."

In Kosovo, a clean-up followed detection. In Lebanon, a clean-up, which is all the more expensive for a country lacking the necessary facilities, is unlikely if no further international pressure is brought to bear on the matter. The continued existence of questions is, in this case, simply unacceptable when so much material indicating a likely link between elevated levels of cancer and birth defects in Iraq and heavy United States and British use of DU bombs there in 1991, for instance -- never mind the possibility of new, untested weapons based at least in part on enriched uranium.

It would surely do Israel good too to request the file be reopened internationally, given that dust particles of uranium don't tend to respect borders and would, if they have indeed been dropped in Lebanon in bomb form, readily be swept back across, southwards with the wind.

C a p t i o n : A Lebanese bulldozer demolishes a building damaged by Israeli strikes in the southern Lebanese village of Hannawiye


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