I am concerned about what Israel has been doing and might do in Gaza. Some aspects of Israel’s current policy is morally dubious. At the same time the issues here are far more complicated than most people seem to recognize and what Israel is doing is, at that point, not totally clear.
I think charges that Israel is engaging in genocide or ethnic cleansing, are at this point, and to be blunt, absurd. Israel does have a right to respond with military force to the Hamas’ attack. But it should do so in a limited way, and one that respects the moral rules of warfare that prohibit targeting civilians. And that means, among other things, that it must provide or allow others to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza’s caught up in the war. Its unwillingness to do so now is, also to be blunt, morally indefensible.
Here is how I come to these conclusions. (This is a very brief summary of a longer piece I’m in the process of writing, which will answer many questions I can’t deal with there.)
1. Israel has a right to respond with force to the Hamas’ attack last week. And that right is not mitigated by policies of the Israeli government I have long criticized, including the creation of settlements and the unnecessary burdens placed on the lives of Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza. Israel, like any state, has a right to respond to violence against its citizens, especially violence that, by targeting civilians, clearly reflects Hamas’ policy that Israeli Jews have no right to live in peace in their country.
2. Not only does Israel have a right to respond militarily but, sadly, the long term goal of securing a peaceful settlement between Israel and the Palestinians is more likely if Hamas and Palestinians as a whole recognize Israel’s military capacity and it’s willingness to use it to defend Israeli lives and if Hamas’ military capacity is degraded.
This history of this (and other conflicts) show that military losses on the part of both Israelis, Palestinians, (and many others in other times and places) lead to tempered ambition and a greater willingness to compromise.
3. Israel has a moral responsibility not to directly target non-combatants and, in addition, to accept risks to its soldiers to minimize civilian deaths.
Israel has in the past done more than most states to live up to this standard. But it has not always done so. Without more information we cannot evaluate its policy in the current air war.
4. The mere fact that Palestinian civilians are dying in Gaza, does not mean that Israel is violating the prohibition against targeting non-combatants. There is no moral equivalence between what Hamas did last week and the current response by the Israeli government. In a densely populated area, in which Hamas’s military installations including ammunition depots, military headquarters, and rocket launch sites, among others, are embedded in Palestinian communities, it impossible for Israel to attack legitimate targets, or even to do so while assuming greater risks to its soldiers, without some civilians dying. This is especially true when it is relying, as it has been, on air strikes. Hamas has, for its entire history, done the exact opposite of what fighting a just war requires: it has placed its military installations, rocket launchers, and barracks among and behind the civilians. Hamas political strategy has been precisely to fight in a way that puts the Palestinian population at risk so that it can claim that Israel is committing war crimes. That explains why, after Israel called on civilians to temporarily leave the northern part of Gaza so that it can minimize the threat to civilians., Hamas insisted that they stay. It’s also why Hamas false claimed that Israel deliberately bombed a hospital. It’s no clear that the hospital itself was not hit at all; that the devastation outside the hospital was caused by an errant missile launched by Islamic Jihad, and that deaths from this horrible incident were exaggerated by at least 100%
5. . Israel could more effectively avoid civilian deaths by engaging in ground rather than combat. If and when it invades Gaza, the world will call this an escalation. From my point of view, it would be better for Israel to fight on the ground than in the air. Although such combat would lead to the death of more Israeli soldiers, taking on such a burden to avoid civilian deaths is I believe morally appropriate and required.
6. But because of where Hamas forces and materiel are located, many civilians would still harmed. Asking civilians to leave the northern part of Gaza so as to avoid being killed in a ground war is a totally appropriate request, one that would make it possible for Israel to target legitimate Hamas targets while minimizing civilian deaths.
7. But if this policy is to meet the moral and legal requirements of war, Israel MUST give civilians time to leave the combat zone and must allow for and provide, humanitarian aid to civilians fleeing those parts of Gaza.
Until recently Israel has not been helpful in providing humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, which made its policy of putting Gaza to a siege is morally indefensible. (Egypt has not been terribly unhelpful as well.) US efforts to change this policy appears to be working. It cannot happen soon enough.
Of course, the policy of asking Gazan’s to leave the combat zone is only justified for a limited period of time. When a short war is over they must be allowed to return. And Israel as well as other countries must provide help to the Palestinians in Gaza to rebuild their communities.
8. At war’s end, Israel must reverse the policies that have exacerbated conflict with the Palestinians and that are one reason, though not the only reason, for the Hamas’s attack. (I have argued elsewhere that Palestinians have a right to use violence to attain their political goals even though there is no justification for targeting civilians.)
I wrote above that an Israeli military response is necessary if there is to be hope for peace. But that is only one-half, and perhaps the lesser half, of what Israel must do now. It must give Palestinians reasonable expectations that their national aspirations can be met in a peaceful settlement with Israel. At a minimum, this means ending new settlements in the West Bank, controlling settler violence there now; reducing the burdens of every day life for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and committing to the creation of a Palestinian state, among other steps.
9. I have not yet addressed the question of what Israel’s war aims should be. There are issues of morality and strategy here and, at this point, given my limited knowledge of what Israel could accomplish militarily and at what cost in the lives of civilians, I’m not sure what the right answer is.
However, at this point, my inclination is to say that the goals of this war should be limited to a major reduction in the military threat of Hamas.
Larger goals such as ending Hamas’ rule over Gaza strike me asproblematic in a few ways, even though Hamas’s rule over Gaza has not only put Israel in constant danger but has been tyrannical to it’s own people.
(a) It is unlikely to be worth the possibly immense cost of civilian life as well as of of Israeli soldiers.
(b) It is very hard to understand who will reconstitute a new government for Gaza. Israel has no right to do so and anyone who works with Israel in creating a new government will not be accepted by Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority is not capable of doing so. It is not clear that third parties–Egypt or Saudi Arable–are willing to do so or that they would be accepted by Palestinians either. Perhaps some combination of the PA supplemented with an Arab militia could constitute a new temporary government and limit the impact of whatever part of Hamas is not destroyed by Israel. But this question must be answered. With no answer to this question, Israel risks both an endless quagmire and the collapse of any authority in Gaza. Neither is an acceptable outcome.
(c) Even if Hamas were to be eliminated at reasonable cost, sooner or later, some group, even a totally new one, will pick up Hamas radical Islamist ideology and act on it. The only antidote to the return of Hamas in some shape or form is Israeli willingness to take the steps toward peace outlined above.
War is ugly and horrifying. Yet it is sometimes necessary. Responding with force to the Hamas attack is a necessary war for Israel to undertake. But it should be strictly limited in both its aims and means.