Wibble is right that Israel did what almost all nations would have done. The Provisional IRA hit the mainland with a handful of attacks over thirty years, and we responded with a fair few small-scale atrocities of our own - much like the Israeli response to the comparable, if much more intensive, suicide-bombing campaign during the second Intifada. Had the IRA hit mainland cities with fifty-odd rockets a day, however crap, we would have gone in hard, and with air power too. Because any response that did not stop the rockets would have been political suicide. The public aren't very squeamish when it comes to enemy deaths - after all, the US and UK have recently killed thousands in Afghanistan and Iraq, under no existential threat at all.
The question occupying me, which Mozza raised the other day, is not whether an invasion was justified, but whether there was an element of deterrence by collective punishment in the large-scale death and destruction that resulted. Is that ‘just what happens’ when your enemy hides in civilian areas and won’t come out to play, or was a certain amount of general death and damage part of the plan? You have to suspect that those hits on UN buildings were not accidental – there was a message to the Palestinians (there’s nowhere to hide), and a message to the UN in Gaza (if you don’t have neutrality you don’t have immunity). Certainly Israeli commentators are saying that the Lebanon ‘defeat’ should now be reappraised in the light of Hezbollah’s passivity during this war. Their civilian populations, it is argued, would not tolerate that level of destruction again in the service of someone else’s struggle.
The problem with this approach, whether it’s effective or not, is that it’s simply not acceptable. If that is part of the strategic thinking, then it really is state terrorism and a war crime. The lines are blurry – some retaliatory strikes are reasonable – but deliberate destruction of whole swathes of civilian areas in order to make a point is not. Israelis often say that with neighbours like theirs, they can’t afford to project anything except ruthlessness. But then you have to decide whether you want to be like a Western-style democracy or a middle eastern basket-case. If collective punishment is any part of your strategy, then you’re drifting towards the latter.
It’s also not going to work. It’s true the election of unashamedly racist, religiously fanatical Iranian proxies was very bad news for Israel. But punishing the population with blockades and destruction won’t make Hamas lose legitimacy. All it does is give the people nothing to lose, and that’s nothing but good for a radical organisation like Hamas.
As for Hamas, they deliberately brought this disaster onto their already battered people. It's not like they thought the Israelis would relax the blockade if they just bombed them for a while. They know the Israelis, they knew full well what they would do, and their leadership in Damascus continued to refuse ceasefires to the bitter end while their civilians died. They also launched their attacks in the run-up to an election, and during an American presidential interregnum, when they knew Israel had a free hand.
The explanation for this decision captures the extraordinary cynicism of Hamas: they
want their own people to die. They want them to die for publicity. If the Israelis had killed ten times as many civilians, Hamas would have been delighted. As we speak they are happily torturing and murdering dozens of their Fatah brothers in Gaza. This is not a political party in any sense we normally understand it: a powerful section of it is a death cult, who by its own words
"love death as you love life".
They have also done much to legitimate the hard-line Israeli belief in the necessity of ruthlessness. After all, the experience of unilateral withdrawal from both Lebanon and Gaza seems to bear this out. Hamas is just as responsible for the blockade as Israel: a party genuinely interested in a two-state solution would not have responded to the withdrawal by firing rockets. Trust can only develop by small steps, and much as the return of both territories was long overdue, it’s unrealistic to expect the Israelis to withdraw and then accept rocket attacks and the digging of tunnels designed to abduct their personnel, without doing something to stop it.
Nevertheless, the Israelis have to relax the blockade. It’s brutal, it’s counterproductive, and it’s collective punishment. For Israel, and for the non-settled parts of the West Bank, a truce means trade, development, building lives. But it’s not like that in Gaza under a truce - life’s still utterly shit, so there’s no real incentive to continue. The status-quo is not static: a general stand-off and lack of hostilities is alright in Israel, but means strangulation in Gaza, and a swelling settlement population on the West Bank. That doesn’t mean Hamas weren’t wrong - despicable, in fact - to refuse to extend the truce - they were. But it does mean it’s time to talk to them, death-cult or not - because there isn’t any other way of stopping this. Israel currently has a strengthened strategic position and unprecedented support from Sunni Arab leaders. Now is the time for negotiations.
