It won’t be long before the first wave of whining, hypocritical and malevolent op-ed pieces condemning the Israeli operation that began in Gaza this morning rolls in. Israel will be accused of acting disproportionately, committing genocide, deliberately targeting babes in arms and much else besides.
There will also be calls for international intervention to protect civilians (Palestinian civilians, of course. Israeli civilians don’t count for the arbiters of international dinner party morality,) for the “root causes” of the conflict to be addressed (in the eyes of Hamas, and not only Hamas, the root cause of the conflict is not the absence of a Palestinian state but the existence of a Jewish one) and for the political and military leaders of Israel (and no other party to the conflict) to be investigated for war crimes.
Hamas, and its supporters in the West, can have no complaints about the unfolding Israeli operation. They have repeatedly declared their lack of interest in extending the recently expired ceasefire and their determination to keep on attacking Israel with all the means at their disposal. Indeed, this morning’s air attacks are a sign that Jerusalem views them with the respect and seriousness that parties to armed conflict always owe to their most challenging adversaries.
It’s possible that Hamas’s leaders had started to believe their own propaganda about their organization’s strength and Israel’s moral weakness, and think that they had achieved a level of strategic deterrence such as that which prevails between Israel and Hezbollah. If this was the case, then it’s good that the process of disabusing them of these beliefs has begun before they had a chance to make them a reality. While the vulnerability of Israel to mass rocket attacks against its civilian population and the concomitant restraints on its freedom of action was indeed demonstrated by the Second Lebanon War, the same conflict also demonstrated the foolishness of allowing enemies just over the border to acquire such an arsenal and the infrastructure to support it.
There may also some nervous beard stroking going on in Tehran this morning. The mullahs have quite possibly fallen into the trap of believing that the state for Jews was on its last legs, just because they themselves were blue in the face from repeating that it was so. They may also have believed that, chastened by its 2006 experience in Lebanon, there was no end to the provocations Israel would endure from Gaza and that Hamas would be allowed to grow in both strength and arrogance on an unlimited basis.
Though they can be forgiven for some doubts about the effect of civilian casualties on moderate Palestinian opinions, realistic proponents of a two state solution will find little to reproach in Israel’s decision to finally extend its attacks on Hamas beyond the killing of the foot soldiers that launch the rockets and mortars. The difficulties of arriving at such a solution are in any case not small and the existence of a preening Hamas regime confident that Israel would never dare take it on in a serious way rendered it something close to a fantasy. There can’t be a two state solution as long as Hamas believes it has realistic military options against Israel.
Israel must take every possible care to avoid civilian casualities and there should be no limits placed on the entry of food and medicine into the Strip. It should also strive to kill as many political and military leaders as it can.
Israel must stop its ears to the howls of the hypocrites and, now that it has finally started, there should be no premature end to the operation. It can’t be ended until Hamas has suffered sufficient damage to make it ready to accept a ceasefire that involves a complete end to attacks on Israel in return for Israel allowing a substantial improvement in the quality of life of civilians in Gaza.
Of course, the “chorus of hypocrisy” is already in full swing, or should that be: in resounding cacophony…
What bears repeating from Eamonn’s piece here is this statement:
“Indeed, this morning’s air attacks are a sign that Jerusalem views them [i.e. Hamas] with the respect and seriousness that parties to armed conflict always owe to their most challenging adversaries.”
Quite so. The hypocrites like to downplay the “home-made” rockets that rain down on the communities in a 20-30 km radius of Gaza, but obviously, it’s not just how many or how few people get killed or wounded by those “home-made” rockets — it’s simply that living under the constant threat of rocket attacks, day in and day out for years, is not something that is acceptable. Just the other day Hamas boasted that Israel was “too confused” to respond to the attacks from Gaza; maybe they hoped that this kind of utterly stupid rhetoric would prevent anybody from taking them seriously…
Petra writes:
” it’s not just how many or how few people get killed or wounded by those “home-made” rockets — it’s simply that living under the constant threat of rocket attacks, day in and day out for years, is not something that is acceptable.”
What do you suggest that the people of South Lebanon do regarding
the unexploded cluster bombs, a constant threat in their lives?
One of many reports on this topic, which I notice are
(almost?) entirely ignored by Engage/Z-word/Harry’s Place:
(please correct me if I’m wrong on this)
http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/israel-winograd-commission-disregards-israeli-war-crimes-20080131
The Israeli government’s persistent refusal to hand over the cluster bombs strike data and the exact coordinates of the areas into which its forces fired the cluster bombs has made this already painstaking mine-clearance task more deadly and time consuming. To date, 40 people (27 civilians and 13 de-mining personnel) have been killed and 234 have been injured (200 civilians and 34 de-mining personnel) by unexploded ordnance and the United Nation Mine Action Coordination Centre (UN-MACC) has identified more then 900 sites contaminated by unexploded but still lethal remnants of cluster bombs and other ordnance launched by Israeli forces into South Lebanon.
Israel’s behaviour with regard to cluster munitions has indeed been bad. I wrote about it briefly here
http://blog.z-word.com/2008/09/cluster-munitions-that-work/
and in my pre Z word days here
http://tinyurl.com/cluster1
and about the stupidity of banning such weapons here
http://tinyurl.com/cluster2
Cluster munitions were used by Nato in the air campaigns that led to dayton and the removal of the serbs from Kosovo.
I am sure they can’t have caused any trouble for the people living in the areas where they were used otherwise we’d be hearing about it all the time
Seth, Israel has repeatedly explained its rationale for using cluster bombs in the 2006 Lebanon war, and has also investigated if they were used appropriately. There was some criticism of the IDF’s handling of this matter; however, in principle, the use of cluster bombs was of course legal.
WRT clean-up efforts, it has been repeatedly pointed out that there shouldn’t be any problem to identify the sites: Hezbollah knows where they had rocket launchers and weapons, and that’s where the cluster bombs were dropped. So it might be good if you took your complaints to the group that caused the whole problem.
Petra, what you refer to as my “complaint” was a statement
from Amnesty International. Your statements about where the
bombs were dropped are in contradiction to the reports of HRW
and AI. If you have a serious rebuttal of the information in
for example
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/02/16/flooding-south-lebanon
I’d be interested in seeing it.
Eammon, your comment about cluster bombs and NATO is
inappropriate in two ways. First, you can read about it in the
same places you can read about Israeli use of cluster bombs, or
the use of cluster bombs in general. Second, there is the
matter of the scale of the usage:
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/62428/section/7
“Israel’s use of cluster munitions was the most extensive use of the weapon anywhere in the world since the 1991 Gulf War and was concentrated in a relatively small geographical area. The number and density of cluster munitions used in Lebanon vastly exceeded their use in prior wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq where Human Rights Watch also conducted investigations.”
The main point however is the matter of “hypocrisy”. It’s good
that you refer to Israel actions as “bad” and showed a
“disgraceful and possibly criminal lack of concern
for the safety of the civilian population of Lebanon”.
Again, however, what should the people of South Lebanon do?
There is no reason why Lebanese civilians should have to
live with the thread of their children having their limbs
blown off while playing in the backyard, especially since Israel is
refusing to hand over the strike data.
It seems to me that if your (Eamonn and Petra) standards
(not mine) are applied as well to the people of South Lebanon,
then they, or some organization claiming to act for them, such as
Hezbollah, has the right to bomb security stations throughout
Israel (or the United States), in order to show that this
situation cannot continue.