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bitterlemons-international.org
Middle East Roundtable /
Edition 25
An Israeli View:
Israel's Gaza dilemma
by Yossi Alpher
Early on the morning of Sunday, June 25, several Palestinian
organizations led by Hamas carried out a bloody attack on an Israeli
military emplacement at Kerem Shalom abutting the southern Gaza Strip. In a
rare exception to their terrorist rule, the Palestinians attacked Israeli
soldiers (abducting one) rather than civilians, and operated fully inside
sovereign Israeli territory. The attack, and the anticipation of Israel's
response, temporarily overshadow the day-to-day reality of recent months.
But not for long. In Gaza, Palestinians are still fighting Palestinians;
even the Hamas leadership is conflicted. From Gaza, Palestinians are
attacking Israeli civilians with rockets, even though (or because?) we have
left the Strip and withdrawn to the 1949 armistice line. The town of Sderot
has been traumatized by the attacks. Israel's armed response against
Palestinian terrorists in Gaza, increasingly based on air power, has in
recent weeks inadvertently killed a disproportionate number of Palestinian
civilians, sparking protests in Israel and beyond and Palestinian calls for
revenge.
While these peaks of violence may increase or decline from time to time, and
bearing in mind that Israel's response to Sunday's attack may be dramatic,
there is every likelihood that this pattern of violent events will continue,
along with the protests, condemnations and traumas that accompany it. It
poses a by-now familiar dilemma for Israeli society that can be summarized
in two questions. What is the nature of Israeli responsibility for the
Palestinian civilian deaths? And how should Israel respond to ongoing
Palestinian attacks that target its civilians?
Most Israelis, this writer included, believe that there is no moral
equivalency between Israeli civilians deliberately targeted by Palestinian
terrorists and Palestinian civilians inadvertently killed in the course of
attacking the terrorists as a response to terrorism. We would much rather
fight our Palestinian wars at the military-to-military level like at Kerem
Shalom, despite Israel's losses in that attack and despite the undoubted
moral advantage we believe we have in the war against terrorism.
The Palestinian leadership, both Fateh and Hamas, argue a reverse lack of
moral equivalency: Israel deliberately targets Palestinian civilians in acts
of state terrorism, whereas Palestinian attacks on Israelis are a justified
response to aggression. Variations on this Palestinian line include the
claim that all Israelis are in some sense soldiers, hence fair targets, and
that the Israeli aggression being responded to did not necessarily happen
yesterday, but goes back to 1967, or 1948. Polls consistently show that a
majority of Palestinians continues to support suicide bombings to this day.
In between is the argument, voiced by part of the left in Israel, a few
Palestinian moderates and various international actors, that Israel's
response is disproportionate and that the Israel Defense Forces knowingly
and deliberately fire at targets surrounded by civilians and are prepared to
justify heavy Palestinian civilian casualties in the course of eliminating
terrorists.
Apropos, since 2003 the Israel Air Force has improved its ordnance and
attack tactics: for the past two years only one-twelfth as many civilians
were killed in the course of targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders
and operatives. The recent higher level of Palestinian casualties is
apparently an indication that terrorists in Gaza increasingly confine their
activities to heavily populated areas, precisely in order to thwart the
Israeli tactics.
The Kerem Shalom attack affords the opportunity for a rare moment of clarity
in both Israeli and Palestinian thinking about the conflict in and around
Gaza. Either Palestinian leaders Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and Ismail
Haniyeh exercise extraordinary leadership, return the abducted soldier and
enforce a genuine ceasefire, or Israel is likely to radically escalate its
military response. One objective could be to eliminate Gaza-based Hamas
entirely. Another certainly would be for PM Ehud Olmert to demonstrate that
disengagement doesn't tie Israel's hands in defending its civilians and its
territory, and that security fences are necessary even when Palestinian
militants go over and under them.
I believe that the Israeli moral equivalency argument is a powerful one:
terrorists deliberately target civilians; we don't, and when we hit
civilians in the course of protecting ourselves, we agonize over it. There
is an element of the "clash of civilizations" in this equation that we may
have to call on in explaining to the world why the IDF has launched a
massive retaliation against Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza.-
Published 26/6/2006 © bitterlemons.org
Yossi Alpher is coeditor of the bitterlemons family of internet
publications. He is former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic
Studies at Tel Aviv University and a former senior adviser to PM Ehud Barak.
A Palestinian View:
A logical consequence of failed politics
The dramatic Palestinian attack on an Israeli military post on the border
with the Gaza Strip did not come as much of a surprise to anybody. On the
contrary, it represented the gradual and consistent escalation of
violence...
Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet
forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its
specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about
the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers
and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the
region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at
ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org
and
yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
hagalil.com 29-06-2006 |
