To start with such a comment as, “Israel has the right for self-defence”, is now, in my eyes, an act of apologism.
Of course Israel has the right for self-defense. What it doesn’t have the right of, is unimpugnable, repeated, and State directed acts of war crimes. Disproportionate to the extreme: essentially war crimes themselves, as an act of military offense. Collective punishment and forced displacement are war crimes. The legal minutiae of justification is indeed complex, such that there are those skilled in the Law of Arm Conflict, who state “the estimated offensive outcomes prevented, by attacking a place of (otherwise) safe harbour, if the enemy are known to be hiding in such a place, are justified in the Laws of War, if the estimated acts’ prevented are greater than the offensive act on the (otherwise) safe harbour.” This is offense in regards to proportionality and preemption – which of course has its place in warfare. However given the sheer level of disproportionality, this means in practice, Israel is conducting its war with one eye on constructing a future defense to the International Criminal Court.
Yet this is not how the court of public opinion works, and there is such a court, and it’s important. If, in Israel’s eyes, moral equivalency exists here – then each Israeli Jewish citizen is worth six and a half Palestinians, at the current death rate. And given that roughly two thirds of Palestinians are children, this equates to 6,000 children dead, of the estimated 9,000 total. Very few of these children, I would suspect, are trained Hamas mercenaries.
1400 dead Jewish Israelis is indeed an atrocity – a terrorist atrocity. Collective punishment is not the correct response. Death ratio’s such as this, justified on grounds of moral equivalency, are also perceived in more simplistic terms – and that is racism. It says to the outside world, “I am worth more than you.” The average death ratio of Palestinian to Israeli Jew, roughly across the last 20 years of conflicts, equates roughly to 13-1. On current trajectory this means Israel needs to kill 9,000 more Palestinians, just to get to the average. Is this not ridiculous? Yet how much more so than the 9,000 currently dead?
This is not to even mention the economic cost of devastating infrastructural destruction, to the tune of perhaps, who knows – but a fair guestimation from previous conflicts would be of the order of $50 to $80 billion dollars in infrastructure cost? This is also to not account for the productivity lost in the absence of such industrial capacity – even if this capacity is indeed represented through the actions of small traders and mercantilism, typical of the way a Gazan economy, whose access to a more sophisticated and modern world of production and financial transactions, necessarily has to conduct itself.
Beyond racism and enforced economic dislocation, we come onto the fundamental question of Survival.
By such disproportionate actions, Israel is blithely damaging its future security. The Abraham Accords are a series of treaties designed to integrate Israel into the economics and international politics of its Arab neighbours – surely a wholly wonderful thing? These are likely, almost certainly, suspended – if not even to be rescinded. Palestinians have often been treated as the poor cousin within the Arab brotherhood, and yet the neighbouring nations are almost surely likely to embrace again their claim for Statehood within a State. In my view a one state solution is actually more problematic for Israelis, as it can only function with equal rights for all citizens. If Israel believed in equal rights it would never have annexed such swathes of the West Bank.
You cannot kill an ideology – nor should you appease it. In the United Kingdom, the Bloody Sunday atrocity was a calling card to the IRA. Undoubtedly this led to a lengthening and deepening of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Never in modern history, has a war, on its own terms, been conducive to a lasting peace. And the only way prior to modern history that war was indeed conducive to securing a lasting peace – was to kill the entirety of one’s enemy. Given that Israel seems unable to differentiate Hamas from civilian Palestinians, is this something that she is willing to do? If not, the only show in town is a negotiated and diplomatic solution.
#gaza #diplomacy
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