Qana massacre
Based on Wikipedia: Qana massacre
On April 18, 1996, Israeli artillery shells rained down on a United Nations compound in southern Lebanon where more than 800 civilians had taken refuge from a military operation. Within minutes, 106 people were dead. One man, Saadallah Balhas, lost 37 members of his family in that single barrage.
The commander of the Israeli commando unit that called in the artillery strike would later become Prime Minister of Israel.
The Context of Operation Grapes of Wrath
To understand what happened at Qana, you need to understand the volatile relationship between Israel and Hezbollah—the Shia Muslim political party and militant group based in Lebanon. A ceasefire from July 1993 had broken down by early 1996, and by April, both sides were engaged in escalating violence. In the five weeks leading up to the massacre, seven Israeli soldiers, three Lebanese civilians, and at least one Hezbollah fighter had been killed.
Israel's response was Operation Grapes of Wrath, launched on April 11, 1996. The name itself tells you something about the intended scale and ferocity of the campaign. Israeli Major-General Amiram Levin had declared just days earlier that residents of south Lebanon "under the responsibility of Hezbollah will be hit harder."
The Israeli government issued warnings through radio stations controlled by the South Lebanon Army—a militia allied with Israel—telling residents of forty-four towns and villages to evacuate within twenty-four hours. Then came the bombardment: artillery, laser-guided missiles, and a naval blockade of Lebanon's main ports. By mid-April, Israel was firing over 3,000 shells and conducting 200 missile raids daily into Lebanon.
Hezbollah responded by launching Katyusha rockets—simple, unguided projectiles that had become the group's signature weapon—into northern Israel. The Katyusha, named after a Russian folk song, was cheap, portable, and terrifyingly indiscriminate.
Shelter in a UN Compound
As the violence intensified, Lebanese civilians desperately sought safety. By April 14, 745 people had crowded into a United Nations compound at Qana—a village whose name, incidentally, is associated in Christian tradition with Jesus's first miracle of turning water into wine.
The compound wasn't just any building. It had been a UN battalion headquarters for eighteen years. It was clearly marked on Israeli military maps. It bore the distinctive white and black UN signs. The blue flag of the United Nations flew overhead.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon—UNIFIL, as it's known—had been established in 1978 to confirm Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, restore peace and security, and assist the Lebanese government in restoring its authority. By 1996, UNIFIL soldiers, many of them from Fiji, were doing their best to protect civilians caught in a conflict neither side seemed willing to end.
By the morning of April 18, the number of refugees in the compound had swelled to somewhere between 600 and 800. These were ordinary people: families with children, elderly relatives, anyone who couldn't flee further north on the crowded, dangerous roads to Beirut.
The Hours Before the Shelling
What happened in the hours before the attack would later become the subject of intense investigation and bitter dispute.
According to a UN report, Hezbollah fighters fired rockets from locations between 350 and 600 meters from the compound during the midday hours. Then, about fifteen minutes before the shelling began, they fired between five and eight mortar rounds from a position just 220 meters from the center of the compound.
This was not an accident of geography. Hezbollah knew that the Israelis had a policy of responding rapidly and forcefully to any source of fire—within ten minutes, typically. The question that would haunt the aftermath was whether Hezbollah fighters deliberately positioned themselves near the UN compound knowing that civilians were sheltering there, and whether Israel's response was proportionate or even targeted at all.
The Fijian UN soldiers, hearing the nearby mortar fire, immediately began moving civilians into shelters. They knew what was coming.
The Commando Unit
Deep in Hezbollah territory, a special reconnaissance unit of 67 soldiers from the Maglan commando unit had been operating for eight days. Maglan is one of the Israeli Defense Forces' elite special operations units, specializing in reconnaissance and precision strikes behind enemy lines.
Their commander was Naftali Bennett, then a young officer in his mid-twenties. He would later become a tech entrepreneur, a politician, and eventually Prime Minister of Israel from 2021 to 2022.
At 1:52 in the afternoon, a sub-unit of Bennett's force came under mortar fire as they advanced near Qana. The Hezbollah mortar team was positioned at a cemetery just 170 meters from the UN compound. They fired eight 120-millimeter mortar rounds at the Israeli soldiers. Witnesses reported that after firing, the mortar team ran toward the UN compound and took refuge there.
Bennett radioed for support. This is a standard military procedure: when a small unit takes fire and cannot effectively respond or retreat, they call for artillery or air support to suppress the threat. The problem was that no ground forces could reach the commandos quickly enough. The decision was made to launch an artillery barrage.
Five Minutes of Fire
An Israeli artillery battalion positioned just inside Lebanon received the call for fire. A single battery of four M-109A2 howitzers was assigned the mission. The M-109 is a self-propelled artillery piece that fires 155-millimeter shells—roughly six inches in diameter—capable of reaching targets over eighteen miles away.
From 2:07 to 2:12 PM—just five minutes—the battery fired 36 high-explosive shells. Twenty-six had point-detonating fuses, meaning they exploded on impact. Ten had variable-time fuses, designed to detonate in the air above their targets, showering the area below with deadly shrapnel. These airburst shells are particularly lethal against personnel in the open.
Every single shell missed the area where the mortar had been fired from.
Thirteen shells hit the UN compound instead. Nine of them were the deadly airburst rounds.
The refugees who had sought safety behind UN walls were exposed to precisely the kind of weapon designed to maximize casualties against unprotected people.
The Aftermath
One hundred and six civilians died. All but one were Shia Muslims; the exception was a single Christian. More than 116 were wounded. Four Fijian UN soldiers were seriously injured.
The images that emerged were devastating: bodies of children, bloodied survivors, the blue UN flag over scenes of carnage. International condemnation was swift and intense. The diplomatic pressure that followed forced Israel to end Operation Grapes of Wrath earlier than planned.
The Battle Over the Truth
What followed the massacre was a battle over narrative that continues to this day.
The Israeli government expressed regret immediately, but insisted the compound was hit "due to incorrect targeting based on erroneous data." Army Deputy Chief of Staff Matan Vilnai said the gunners had used outdated maps and miscalculated the firing range. Prime Minister Shimon Peres claimed ignorance: "We did not know that several hundred people were concentrated in that camp. It came to us as a bitter surprise."
The Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Amnon Shahak, was more defiant: "I don't see any mistake in judgment. We fought Hezbollah there, and when they fire on us, we will fire at them to defend ourselves. I don't know any other rules of the game, either for the army or for civilians."
Both the Israeli and American governments pointed to Hezbollah's tactic of firing from positions near civilians—what's known in military parlance as "human shielding." State Department spokesperson Nicolas Burns called it "a despicable thing to do, an evil thing."
But the evidence that emerged told a more troubling story.
The Drone Video
A UNIFIL soldier had been recording during the attack. His video showed something the Israeli government initially denied: an unmanned drone and two helicopters in the vicinity at the time of the shelling.
When the UN investigator, Dutch Major-General Franklin van Kappen, asked about the drone, the Israeli Defense Forces repeatedly denied that any drone was flying in the area before or during the shelling. Every eyewitness, however, testified that a pilotless drone had hovered over the compound during the attack.
The truth only emerged when the UNIFIL soldier secretly delivered his tape to Robert Fisk, a veteran British journalist based in Beirut. Fisk sent the video to his newspaper, The Independent, which published still images on May 6, 1996.
Confronted with the evidence, an Israeli government spokesman admitted there was a drone in the area but claimed it "did not detect civilians in the compound." This claim was difficult to credit. The compound had been a known refugee location for days. The white UN markings were visible from the air. And the drone was specifically designed for reconnaissance—for seeing what was on the ground.
The UN Investigation
Major-General van Kappen's investigation was methodical. His conclusions were damning:
The pattern of shell impacts showed two distinct concentrations, about 140 meters apart. If the guns had been aimed at a single target—the mortar site, as Israel claimed—there should have been only one concentration.
The impacts were inconsistent with normal overshooting of the declared target by a few rounds. Something else was going on.
During the shelling, there was a "perceptible shift in the weight of fire from the mortar site to the United Nations compound." In other words, the fire appeared to walk toward the civilians.
The mix of impact fuses and airburst fuses made it "improbable that impact fuses and proximity fuses were employed in random order, as stated by the Israeli forces."
There were no impacts in a second target area that Israel claimed to have shelled.
And despite repeated denials, Israeli helicopters and a drone were indeed present.
Van Kappen's conclusion was carefully worded but clear: "While the possibility cannot be ruled out completely, it is unlikely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of gross technical and/or procedural errors."
Israel categorically rejected the findings.
Amnesty International's Assessment
Amnesty International conducted its own investigation, working with military experts and interviewing both UNIFIL staff and civilians who had been in the compound. The organization posed questions to the Israeli Defense Forces, who did not reply.
Amnesty's conclusion was unequivocal: "The IDF intentionally attacked the UN compound, although the motives for doing so remain unclear. The IDF have failed to substantiate their claim that the attack was a mistake."
The organization acknowledged that it could not establish with certainty whether Israel knew civilians were sheltering in the compound when the attack was launched. But, Amnesty wrote, even if the IDF lacked specific information about civilian presence, "the general information it did possess concerning civilians in UN compounds—in addition to Israel's recognition that UN positions as such are not legitimate targets—should have been sufficient to prevent such an attack."
The inescapable conclusion: "The fact that the attack proceeded can only indicate a callous disregard for the protection of civilian lives and therefore a clear breach of the laws of war's prohibitions on directly or indiscriminately targeting civilians."
Hezbollah's Responsibility
Amnesty did not spare Hezbollah from criticism. The organization found it clear that Hezbollah had fired a mortar from within 200 meters of the compound's edge, targeting an Israeli patrol that had infiltrated north of the security zone and had apparently been laying mines.
By choosing that location, Amnesty concluded, Hezbollah fighters "clearly were reckless as to the consequences this might have for the civilians in the immediate area. In either case, this is a clear breach of the laws of war's prohibitions on using the civilian population as a shield."
But—and this was critical—"Hizbullah's action in no way justifies the IDF attack on the compound."
Human Rights Watch reached a similar conclusion. The choice to use a mix of high-explosive shells that included deadly anti-personnel airburst rounds—fired without warning, in sustained volleys, near a large concentration of civilians—"violated a key principle of international humanitarian law."
The Laws of War
What are these "laws of war" that both organizations invoked?
The principle at stake is called distinction—one of the foundational rules of international humanitarian law, codified in the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols. It requires parties to a conflict to distinguish at all times between civilians and combatants, and between civilian objects and military objectives. Attacks may only be directed against combatants and military objectives.
A related principle is proportionality. Even when attacking a legitimate military target, parties must ensure that the expected civilian casualties are not excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
Both Hezbollah and Israel violated these principles at Qana. Hezbollah by positioning its fighters and weapons near civilians who would predictably suffer retaliation. Israel by launching an artillery strike that killed more than a hundred civilians to suppress a mortar team that had fired eight rounds at a commando unit—and then lying about the reconnaissance drone that could have confirmed civilian presence.
The Political Afterlife
In the years that followed, the Qana massacre became a touchstone in Lebanese memory—a symbol of Israeli military conduct and international indifference. When Naftali Bennett entered politics, his role as commander of the unit that called in the barrage attracted renewed attention.
Bennett served as Israel's Prime Minister from 2021 to 2022, leading a diverse coalition government. The Qana connection followed him, cited by critics as evidence of a military culture that placed insufficient value on civilian lives.
In May 1997, Arab members of the United Nations financial committee lodged a claim against Israel for the cost of the damage to the UN base. The broader costs—human, political, moral—have never been fully calculated.
A Recurring Pattern
The Qana massacre was neither the first nor the last time Lebanese civilians died in Israeli military operations. A decade later, in July 2006, Israeli airstrikes hit the village of Qana again during another war with Hezbollah, killing at least 28 civilians, including 16 children. The coincidence of location lent the second attack a grim resonance.
The fundamental dynamics that produced the 1996 massacre remain largely unchanged: Hezbollah's tactic of operating among civilian populations, Israel's policy of massive retaliation, the presence of UN peacekeepers caught in between, and a civilian population with nowhere safe to go.
What happened at Qana in 1996 was not an aberration. It was a window into the brutal logic of asymmetric warfare, where one side uses proximity to civilians as protection and the other side decides that proximity is not sufficient protection—and where the civilians themselves have no meaningful voice in the decisions that determine whether they live or die.
One hundred and six people sought shelter under the flag of the United Nations. They believed, perhaps, that the blue and white symbol of international order would protect them. It did not. Saadallah Balhas buried thirty-seven members of his family. And the commander who called in the artillery strike went on to lead the nation that fired it.