PERSPECTIVES ON Israel in Gaza

David Grossman / Is Israel too imprisoned in the familiar ceremony of war?
By David Grossman Tags: Israel, Israel News, Hamas

After its severe strike on Gaza, Israel would do well to stop, turn to Hamas' leaders and say: Until Saturday Israel held its fire in the face of thousands of Qassams from the Gaza Strip. Now you know how harsh its response can be. So as not to add to the death and destruction we will now hold our fire unilaterally and completely for the next 48 hours. Even if you fire at Israel, we will not respond with renewed fighting. We will grit our teeth, as we did all through the recent period, and we will not be dragged into replying with force.

Moreover, we invite interested countries, neighbors near and far, to mediate between us and you to bring back the cease-fire. If you hold your fire, we will not renew ours. If you continue firing while we are practicing restraint, we will respond at the end of this 48 hours, but even then we will keep the door open to negotiations to renew the cease-fire, and even on a general and expanded agreement.

That is what Israel should do now. Is it possible, or are we too imprisoned in the familiar ceremony of war?

Until Saturday, Israel under Ehud Barak's military leadership showed remarkable cool. It should not lose its cool in the heat of battle. We should not forget even for a moment that the people of the Gaza Strip will remain our close neighbors and that sooner or later we will want to achieve good neighborly relations with them.

We should in no way strike them so violently, even if Hamas, for years, has made life intolerably miserable for the people of southern Israel, and even if their leaders have refused every Israeli and Egyptian attempt to reach a compromise to prevent this lastest flare-up.

The line of self-control and the awareness of the obligation to protect the lives of the innocent in Gaza must be toed even now, precisely because Israel's strength is almost limitless. Israel must constantly check to see when its force has crossed the line of legitimate and effective response, whose goal is deterrence and a restoration of the cease-fire, and from what point it is once again trapped in the usual spiral of violence.

Israel's leaders know well that given the situation in the Gaza Strip, it will be very hard to reach a total and unequivocal military solution. The lack of a solution might result in an ongoing ambiguous situation where we have already been: Israel will strike Hamas, it will strike and be struck, strike and be struck, and will become unwillingly enmeshed in every trap a situation like this entails, and will not attain its true and essential goals. It might very quickly discover that it is swept up - a strong military power, but helpless to get itself out of the entanglement - into a maelstrom of violence and destruction.

Therefore, stop. Hold your fire. Try for once to act against the usual response, in contrast to the lethal logic of belligerence. There will always be a chance to start firing again. War, as Barak said about two weeks ago, will not run away. International support for Israel will not be damaged, and will even grow, if we show calculated restraint and invite the international and Arab community to intervene and mediate.

It is true that Hamas will thus receive a respite with which to reorganize, but it has had long years to do so, and two more days will not really make a difference. And such a calculated lull might change the way Hamas responds to the situation. The response could even give it an honorable way out of the trap it has set for itself.

And one more, unavoidable thought: Had we adopted this attitude in July 2006, after Hezbollah abducted the soldiers, had we had stopped then, after our first response, and declared we were holding our fire for a day or two to mediate and calm things down, the reality today might be entirely different.

This is also a lesson the government should learn from that war. In fact, it might be the most important lesson.

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Trying to 'teach Hamas a lesson' is fundamentally wrong
By Tom Segev

Channel 1 television broadcast an interesting mix on Saturday morning: Its correspondents reported from Sderot and Ashkelon, but the pictures on the screen were from the Gaza Strip. Thus the broadcast, albeit unintentionally, sent the right message: A child in Sderot is the same as a child in Gaza, and anyone who harms either is evil.

But the assault on Gaza does not first and foremost demand moral condemnation - it demands a few historical reminders. Both the justification given for it and the chosen targets are a replay of the same basic assumptions that have proven wrong time after time. Yet Israel still pulls them out of its hat again and again, in one war after another.

Israel is striking at the Palestinians to "teach them a lesson." That is a basic assumption that has accompanied the Zionist enterprise since its inception: We are the representatives of progress and enlightenment, sophisticated rationality and morality, while the Arabs are a primitive, violent rabble, ignorant children who must be educated and taught wisdom - via, of course, the carrot-and-stick method, just as the drover does with his donkey.
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The bombing of Gaza is also supposed to "liquidate the Hamas regime," in line with another assumption that has accompanied the Zionist movement since its inception: that it is possible to impose a "moderate" leadership on the Palestinians, one that will abandon their national aspirations.

As a corollary, Israel has also always believed that causing suffering to Palestinian civilians would make them rebel against their national leaders. This assumption has proven wrong over and over.

All of Israel's wars have been based on yet another assumption that has been with us from the start: that we are only defending ourselves. "Half a million Israelis are under fire," screamed the banner headline of Sunday's Yedioth Ahronoth - just as if the Gaza Strip had not been subjected to a lengthy siege that destroyed an entire generation's chances of living lives worth living.

It is admittedly impossible to live with daily missile fire, even if virtually no place in the world today enjoys a situation of zero terror. But Hamas is not a terrorist organization holding Gaza residents hostage: It is a religious nationalist movement, and a majority of Gaza residents believe in its path. One can certainly attack it, and with Knesset elections in the offing, this attack might even produce some kind of cease-fire. But there is another historical truth worth recalling in this context: Since the dawn of the Zionist presence in the Land of Israel, no military operation has ever advanced dialogue with the Palestinians.

Most dangerous of all is the cliche that there is no one to talk to. That has never been true. There are even ways to talk with Hamas, and Israel has something to offer the organization. Ending the siege of Gaza and allowing freedom of movement between Gaza and the West Bank could rehabilitate life in the Strip.

At the same time, it is worth dusting off the old plans prepared after the Six-Day War, under which thousands of families were to be relocated from Gaza to the West Bank. Those plans were never implemented because the West Bank was slated to be used for Jewish settlement. And that was the most damaging working assumption of all.

Amira Hass / 'Gaza strike is not against Hamas, it's against all Palestinians'
By Amira Hass

At 3:19 P.M. Sunday, the sound of an incoming missile could be heard over the telephone. And then another, along with the children's cries of fear. In Gaza City's Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, high-rise apartment buildings are crowded close together, with dozens of children in every building, hundreds in every block.

Their father, B., informs me that smoke is rising from his neighbor's house and ends the call. An hour later, he tells me that two apartments were hit. One was empty; he does not know who lives there. The other, which suffered casualties, belongs to a member of a rocket-launching cell, but no one senior or important.

At noon Sunday, the Israel Air Force bombed a compound belonging to Gaza's National Security Service. It houses Gaza City's main prison. Three prisoners were killed. Two were apparently Fatah members; the third was convicted of collaborating with Israel. Hamas had evacuated most of the Gaza Strip's other prisons, but thought this jail would be safe.

At 12 A.M. on Sunday, a phone call roused S. "I wasn't sleeping anyway," he said. "I picked up the receiver and heard a recorded announcement in Arabic: 'This is to warn you that we will bomb the house of anyone who has arms or ammunition at home.'"

Three members of one neighboring family were killed, all young men in their twenties. None of them owned arms or ammunition; they were simply walking down the street when the IAF bombed a passing car. Another neighbor lost a 16-year-old daughter, and her sister was seriously wounded. The IAF had bombed a building that formerly housed the Palestinian Authority's Preventive Security Service, and their school was located next door.

S. saw the results of some of Saturday's bombings when he visited a friend whose office is located near Gaza City's police headquarters. One person killed in that attack was Hassan Abu Shnab, the eldest son of former senior Hamas official Ismail Abu Shnab.

The elder Abu Shnab, whom Israel assassinated five years ago, was one of the first Hamas politicians to speak in favor of a two-state solution. Hassan worked as a clerk at the local university and played in the police band for fun. He was performing at a police graduation ceremony on Saturday when the bomb struck.

"Seventy policemen were killed there, not all Hamas members," said S., who opposes Hamas. "And even those who supported Hamas were young men looking for a job, a salary. They wanted to live. And therefore, they died. Seventy in one blow. This assault is not against Hamas. It's against all of us, the entire nation. And no Palestinian will consent to having his people and his homeland destroyed in this way."

Gaza War Diary II - Who speaks for the Gazans?
By Bradley Burston

Who speaks for the Gazans? Whose is the voice for a million and a half of the most victimized people on the face of our earth, serially colonized, exploited, deprived of work, deprived of food, deprived of basic freedoms, deprived, decade after degenerating decade, of any semblance of a future?

The warfare this week has demonstrated that, rather than coming to the Gazans' aid, the supposed allies of the people of the Strip have rendered Gazans more vulnerable than ever to military attack, to misrule, and to a world community less likely than ever to seek their rescue.

Just when they need it most, who speaks for the people of Gaza?

# Not Hamas.

Democratically elected, certainly. A successful advocate for the rights and security of Gazans? You be the judge. Who, in Hamas, truly speaks for the Gazans?

# Not the organization's leaders in their bombproof, video-ready bunkers. Ismail Haniyeh and his colleagues Mahmoud Zahar, Ahmed Jabri, Muhammad Def, and Said Siam can speak about the vulnerability of the Gaza citizenry to Israeli attack and revel in their personal desire for martyrdom, but the words ring less deeply from the relative comfort of meter-thick concrete.

# Not Hamas policy czar Khaled Meshal, who further sapped sympathy for Gazans by announcing from his Damascus podium that "there is no alternative to suicide attacks, this is what will aid Gaza and protect the West Bank."

"This," he said in remarks broadcast on Army Radio, "is what will remove the disgrace."

If not Hamas, then who?

# Certainly not Iran.

As if to guarantee that the West would associate Gazans with jihadist extremism and view them as villains rather than victims, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded to the Israeli offensive by issuing a religious decree ordering all Muslims everywhere to come to the defense of Gazans.

"All Palestinian combatants and all the Islamic world's pious people are obliged to defend the defenceless women, children and people in Gaza in any way possible," Kamenei said on Sunday "Whoever is killed in this legitimate defense is considered a martyr."

Certainly not the suicide bomber

Hamas' support for suicide bombings, and its repeated threats to resume them, cost Gazans world sympathy, particularly when radical Islamic bombings are a staple of daily news. In eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, for example, a bomber killed at least a dozen children.

The same day, in a particularly perverse turn of events, a bomber on a bicycle blew himself up Sunday amid a crowd of demonstrators in northern Iraq who were protesting Israel's airstrikes on Gaza, killing one demonstrator and wounding 16 others

# Not the Arab world.

The pointedly muted response to the Israeli aerial onslaught has underscored the extent to which Hamas has become isolated within the Arab and wider Muslim world.
In fact, many of the protests by Palestinians and their supporters worldwide have centered on the inaction of Arab governments and their apparent willingness to see Hamas take a serious hit.

In an extraordinary appeal to Arab and Muslim media, a somewhat wooden and nervous spokesman for Hamas Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh Sunday took to the airwaves to explicitly beg Arabic-language and Islamic world news outlets to repeatedly broadcast scenes of horror in the Strip ? a request that has clearly never before been at all necessary.

# Not necessarily the Western press.

Before Al Qaida exported terrorism to New York, London, Madrid and resorts favored by Americans, Europeans and Australians, the bread and butter of the Western press was the easily saleable image of Israel as the villainous and questionably human Goliath, and Palestinians as the virtuous, innocent-as-children David.

But just as news outlets in New York, London, and elsewhere adopted the word terrorist only when the terrorist visited their cities, years of suicide bombs and Qassams targeting Israeli civilians have utterly changed the image of the Palestinian and the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Initial Gaza-based accounts by the Associated Press, for example, were notably balanced, beginning "Israeli warplanes retaliating for rocket fire from the Gaza Strip pounded dozens of security compounds across the Hamas-ruled territory in unprecedented waves of airstrikes Saturday, killing more than 200 people and wounding nearly 400 in the single bloodiest day of fighting in years.

Most of those killed were security men, but an unknown number of civilians were also among the dead. Hamas said all of its security installations were hit, threatened to resume suicide attacks, and sent at least 70 rockets and mortar shells crashing into Israeli border communities, according to the Israeli military. One Israeli was killed and at least six people were hurt.

# Others who have spoken up for Gazans, have effectively left them worse off.

First among these are legions of Western and in some cases Israeli leftists comparing the Gaza operation to the wartime Nazi Holocaust against the Jews.

This group divides roughly into two. There is the Neo-Holocaust Denier, who is convinced that the Israeli operation is much worse than the Nazi extermination campaign.

Then there is the Moral Equivalator, who believes both that the Holocaust did take place, and that there is no difference between Israel killing Hamas men in uniform and Nazis systematically annihilating millions and millions and millions of non-combatants.

# Still others who have spoken for the Gazans undermine their own arguments by forgiving, justifying, dismissing as negligible, or simply turning a blind eye to thousands and thousands of rocket attacks against Israeli population centers.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, has long prided itself, and with just cause, on condemning terrorism from all sources. But in a statement at the weekend denouncing the Israeli attacks, the rocket attacks were somehow forgotten:

"Despite the public 'green light' given to the Israeli military by the Bush administration, American Muslims join our fellow citizens who respect international law and the sanctity of human life in repudiating this massacre carried out using U.S. taxpayer-funded weapons.

"It must be clear by now that the only future offered to the Palestinian people by the outgoing administration was one of perpetual subjugation and humiliation at the hands of the Israeli occupiers. Unfortunately, our nation's timid response to this tragic episode will only serve to fuel anti-American sentiments in the Muslim world.

"We therefore call on President-elect Obama to demonstrate his commitment to change our nation's current one-sided Mideast policy by speaking out now in favor of peace and justice for all parties to this decades-long conflict.

"We also call on world leaders to take direct action to end Israel?s counterproductive and wildly disproportionate attacks and to end the humanitarian siege of Gaza, which led to the recent breakdown of the ceasefire."

Who, in the end, truly speaks for the Gazans?

Those who are willing, just once, to lay down the axes they are accustomed to grinding, and who accurately and with both passion and objectivity describe the suffering and the violence on both sides of the border.

Those who truly speak for the Gazans are those who are willing to grant the humanity of Israeli Jews as well, and who are seeking, in a sincere effort to move past revenge and blind tribalism, a common future for peoples whom fate has somehow decreed, will continue to be neighbors.

Gaza tragedy unfolding
12/28/2008
Events in Gaza have the inevitability of Greek tragedy. Could anyone have doubted that Hamas's antics would end in an Israeli attack? Was it really conceivable that Israel or any other country would do nothing in response to daily rocket and mortar barrages? That Israel would not react to the continued imprisonment of abducted soldier Gilad Shalit? As if terrorizing half the Western Negev was not enough, Hamas had to rub salt in the wounds by staging a grotesque victory parade worthy of a barbarian emperor, in which they publicly taunted Israel and the parents of Gilad Shalit. It was the sort of show that is outlawed by international law, that hasn't been practiced since the Middle Ages, but it attracted hardly a murmur of international condemnation. The Palestinians had their gladiator show. The admission price was yet to be paid.
The United Nations officials and EU officials who are busy casting the blame for the loss of innocent lives should look in the mirror first of all. They witnessed the events in Gaza and did nothing. They allowed the Hamas to take over the Gaza strip and did nothing to restore the legitimate government. They witnessed the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit and did nothing to free him or even to ensure that he was treated according to international law. They allowed the smuggling of weapons, and worried only about a bogus humanitarian crisis in Gaza. They allowed the continuing rocket and mortar fire into Israel and did nothing. Only a blind person could not see the rage of ordinary Israelis, who could not fathom why the world allows rockets to rain down on our towns and has nothing to say other than "restraint." No government or international agency made any serious move to stop the rocket fire, to eliminate the unlawful Hamas government and to restore order and decent administration in Gaza. Didn't the Greek chorus of foreign officials warn about their concern over and over? And didn't they do as little to stop the tragedy as the chorus in Oedipus Rex?
The Israeli attack was well planned, we are told. The international reaction could also have been scripted in advance. The UN Security Council meeting, the faked civilian casualty figures, the pious calls to refrain from violence, could all have been written up in advance of the attack. The hypocrisy generators are running at full capacity. The West Bank Palestinian Authority deplores the Israeli attacks officially. while unnamed Palestinian officials express the hope that Israel will oust Hamas and allow Fatah to take over in Gaza. A report that is not hard to believe claims that Mahmoud Abbas begged Israel to attack the Hamas in private, while Palestinian authority officials deplored the "barbaric" and "unnecessary" attack in public.
Several Hamas terror groupie fan clubs immediately fabricated a charge that Israel had committed a "massacre" in Gaza. Several such protests appeared within a few hours of the first Israeli attacks, They could not possibly have gathered conclusive evidence of a massacre in that time, even if one had occurred, but the press releases were sent out as a matter of routine procedure. Facts don't matter. Notable among these is the CAIR organization, which is usually so insistent that not all Muslims support terror. Not all Muslims support terror, that's true -- but CAIR does. They have made that much crystal clear. Eyyad Sarraj, who has been associated with "humanitarian" advocacy in Gaza in the past, was regrettably a signatory of another such "massacre" manifesto.
According to Reuters:
Israel telephoned some Palestinians to warn them their homes were targeted and they should leave to avoid being killed. In at least one instance a home was bombed after the occupants left.
The homes were targeted because they housed rockets, launchers or other terror paraphernalia. This doesn't sound like a massacre. It is not recorded that Hamas ever called any Israeli civilians to warn them of rocket attacks. There is no evidence that Israel deliberately targeted civilians, and most of the evidence indicates that Israel hit primarily Gaza police installations and personnel.
But none of the above should prevent us from seeing clearly what most likely lies ahead. After every other solution failed, one would like to hope that the military solution would succeed. But we should not confuse our wishes with reality. Didn't Israel pound Gaza continuously in 2006 after the abduction of Gilad Shalit? And what good did that do? Didn't Israel pound Lebanese targets in the Second Lebanon War? Did it oust the Hezbollah?
Short of Israel retaking Gaza in what would no doubt be a blood bath, what can be the outcome of this attack beyond Hamas remaining somehow intact and declaring "victory?" Israeli officials are a bit more cautious with their pronouncements than they were in the disastrous Second Lebanon War. Still, before the attack, Israel GOC Southern Command Yoav Galant said that an IDF attack would try to "send Gaza decades into the past" in terms of weapons capabilities. Since Israel held the Gaza strip until 2005, it is impossible to understand what Galant thought he was talking about.
Can there be much doubt about the outcome of the Israeli attack? The scripting of a tragedy cannot allow for a happy end. At the end of the exercise there will be an additional 300 or 500 or a thousand dead people, but it is very unlikely that the situation in Gaza will have budged very much. It is even likely that the attack will leave Israel in a worse position than it was before the attack.If the Gaza operation is a failure, nobody in Israel will remember that they clamored for it. Wisdom would seem to dictate, in hindsight, that the attack should have been avoided at all costs. The characteristics of tragedy however, arethat the outcome is foreseen. The protagonists are drawn inevitably to their own destruction by a succession of events which they seem to control, whereas in fact, their destinies are fore-ordained by the fates.
Ami Isseroff

Jerusalem Issue Brief

Institute for Contemporary Affairs
founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation

Vol. 8, No. 16 28 December 2008

Did Israel Use "Disproportionate Force" in Gaza?

Dore Gold

* Israeli population centers in southern Israel have been the target of over 4,000 rockets, as well as thousands of mortar shells, fired by Hamas and other organizations since 2001. Rocket attacks increased by 500 percent after Israel withdrew completely from the Gaza Strip in August 2005. During an informal six-month lull, some 215 rockets were launched at Israel.
* The charge that Israel uses disproportionate force keeps resurfacing whenever it has to defend its citizens from non-state terrorist organizations and the rocket attacks they perpetuate. From a purely legal perspective, Israel's current military actions in Gaza are on solid ground. According to international law, Israel is not required to calibrate its use of force precisely according to the size and range of the weaponry used against it.
* Ibrahim Barzak and Amy Teibel wrote for the Associated Press on December 28 that most of the 230 Palestinians who were reportedly killed were "security forces," and Palestinian officials said "at least 15 civilians were among the dead." The numbers reported indicate that there was no clear intent to inflict disproportionate collateral civilian casualties. What is critical from the standpoint of international law is that if the attempt has been made "to minimize civilian damage, then even a strike that causes large amounts of damage - but is directed at a target with very large military value - would be lawful."
* Luis Moreno-Orampo, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, explained that international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court "permit belligerents to carry out proportionate attacks against military objectives, even when it is known that some civilian deaths or injuries will occur." The attack becomes a war crime when it is directed against civilians (which is precisely what Hamas does).
* After 9/11, when the Western alliance united to collectively topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, no one compared Afghan casualties in 2001 to the actual numbers that died from al-Qaeda's attack. There clearly is no international expectation that military losses in war should be on a one-to-one basis. To expect Israel to hold back in its use of decisive force against legitimate military targets in Gaza is to condemn it to a long war of attrition with Hamas.

Israel is currently benefiting from a limited degree of understanding in international diplomatic and media circles for launching a major military operation against Hamas on December 27. Yet there are significant international voices that are prepared to argue that Israel is using disproportionate force in its struggle against Hamas.

Israeli Population Centers Under Rocket Attack

There are good reasons why initial criticism of Israel has been muted. After all, Israeli population centers in southern Israel have been the target of over 4,000 rockets, as well as thousands of mortar shells, fired by Hamas and other organizations since 2001.1 The majority of those attacks were launched after Israel withdrew completely from the Gaza Strip in August 2005. Indeed, rocket attacks increased by 500 percent (from 179 to 946) from 2005 to 2006.

Moreover, lately Hamas has been extending the range of its striking capability even further with new rockets supplied by Iran. Hamas used a 20.4-kilometer-range Grad/Katyusha for the first time on March 28, 2006, bringing the Israeli city of Ashkelon into range of its rockets for the first time. That change increased the number of Israelis under threat from 200,000 to half a million.2 Moreover, on December 21, 2008, Yuval Diskin, Head of the Israel Security Agency, informed the Israeli government that Hamas had acquired rockets that could reach Ashdod, Kiryat Gat, and even the outskirts of Beersheba.3 The first Grad/Katyusha strike on Ashdod, in fact, took place on December 28. There had been no formal cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, but only an informal six-month tahadiya (lull), during which 215 rockets were launched at Israel.4 On December 21, Hamas unilaterally announced that the tahadiya had ended.

Critical Voices

On December 27, 2008, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesmen issued a statement saying that while the Secretary-General recognized "Israel's security concerns regarding the continued firing of rockets from Gaza," he reiterated "Israel's obligation to uphold international humanitarian and human rights law." The statement specifically noted that he "condemns excessive use of force leading to the killing and injuring of civilians [emphasis added]."5

A day later, Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights "strongly condemned Israel's disproportionate use of force." French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, also condemned Israel's "disproportionate use of force," while demanding an end to rocket attacks on Israel.6 Brazil also joined this chorus, criticizing Israel's "disproportionate response."7 Undoubtedly, a powerful impression has been created by large Western newspaper headlines that describe massive Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, without any up-front explanation for their cause.

Proportionality and International Law: The Protection of Innocent Civilians

The charge that Israel uses disproportionate force keeps resurfacing whenever it has to defend its citizens from non-state terrorist organizations and the rocket attacks they perpetuate. From a purely legal perspective, Israel's current military actions in Gaza are on solid ground. According to international law, Israel is not required to calibrate its use of force precisely according to the size and range of the weaponry used against it (Israel is not expected to make Kassam rockets and lob them back into Gaza).

When international legal experts use the term "disproportionate use of force," they have a very precise meaning in mind. As the President of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Rosalyn Higgins, has noted, proportionality "cannot be in relation to any specific prior injury - it has to be in relation to the overall legitimate objective of ending the aggression."8 In other words, if a state, like Israel, is facing aggression, then proportionality addresses whether force was specifically used by Israel to bring an end to the armed attack against it. By implication, force becomes excessive if it is employed for another purpose, like causing unnecessary harm to civilians. The pivotal factor determining whether force is excessive is the intent of the military commander. In particular, one has to assess what was the commander's intent regarding collateral civilian damage.9

What about reports concerning civilian casualties? Some international news agencies have stressed that the vast majority of those killed in the first phase of the current Gaza operation were Hamas operatives. Ibrahim Barzak and Amy Teibel wrote for the Associated Press on December 28 that most of the 230 Palestinians who were reportedly killed were "security forces," and Palestinian officials said "at least 15 civilians were among the dead."10 It is far too early to definitely assess Palestinian casualties, but even if they increase, the numbers reported indicate that there was no clear intent to inflict disproportionate collateral civilian casualties.

During the Second Lebanon War, Professor Michael Newton of Vanderbilt University was in email communication with William Safire of the New York Times about the issue of proportionality and international law. Newton had been quoted by the Council on Foreign Relations as explaining proportionality by proposing a test: "If someone punches you in the nose, you don't burn down their house." He was serving as an international criminal law expert in Baghdad and sought to correct the impression given by his quote. According to Newton, no responsible military commander intentionally targets civilians, and he accepted that this was Israeli practice.

What was critical from the standpoint of international law was that if the attempt had been made "to minimize civilian damage, then even a strike that causes large amounts of damage - but is directed at a target with very large military value - would be lawful."11 Numbers matter less than the purpose of the use of force. Israel has argued that it is specifically targeting facilities serving the Hamas regime and its determined effort to continue its rocket assault on Israel: headquarters, training bases, weapons depots, command and control networks, and weapons-smuggling tunnels. This way Israel is respecting the international legal concept of proportionality.

Alternatively, disproportionality would occur if the military sought to attack even if the value of a target selected was minimal in comparison with the enormous risk of civilian collateral damage. This point was made by Luis Moreno-Orampo, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, on February 9, 2006, in analyzing the Iraq War. He explained that international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court "permit belligerents to carry out proportionate attacks [emphasis added] against military objectives, even when it is known that some civilian deaths or injuries will occur." The attack becomes a war crime when it is directed against civilians (which is precisely what Hamas does) or when "the incidental civilian injuries would be clearly excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage."12 In fact, Israeli legal experts right up the chain of command within the IDF make this calculation before all military operations of this sort.

Proportionality as a Strategic Issue

Moving beyond the question of international law, the charge that Israel is using a disproportionate amount of force in the Gaza Strip because of reports of Palestinian casualties has to be looked at critically. Israelis have often said among themselves over the last seven years that when a Hamas rocket makes a direct strike on a crowded school, killing many children, then Israel will finally act.

This scenario raises the question of whether the doctrine of proportionality requires that Israel wait for this horror to occur, or whether Israel could act on the basis of the destructive capability of the arsenal Hamas already possesses, the hostile declarations of intent of its leaders, and its readiness to use its rocket forces already. Alan Dershowitz noted two years ago: "Proportion must be defined by reference to the threat proposed by an enemy and not by the harm it has produced." Waiting for a Hamas rocket to fall on an Israeli school, he rightly notes, would put Israel in the position of allowing "its enemies to play Russian Roulette with its children."13

The fundamental fact is that in fighting terrorism, no state is willing to play Russian Roulette. After the U.S. was attacked on 9/11, the Western alliance united to collectively topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan; no one compared Afghan casualties in 2001 to the actual numbers that died from al-Qaeda's attack. Given that al-Qaeda was seeking non-conventional capabilities, it was essential to wage a campaign to deny it the sanctuary it had enjoyed in Afghanistan, even though that struggle continues right up to the present.

Is There Proportionality Against Military Forces?

And in fighting counterinsurgency wars, most armies seek to achieve military victory by defeating the military capacity of an adversary, as efficiently as possible. There clearly is no international expectation that military losses in war should be on a one-to-one basis; most armies seek to decisively eliminate as many enemy forces as possible while minimizing their own losses of troops. There are NATO members who have been critical of "Israel's disproportionate use of force," while NATO armies take pride in their "kill ratios" against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Moreover, decisive military action against an aggressor has another effect: it increases deterrence.14 To expect Israel to hold back in its use of decisive force against legitimate military targets in Gaza is to condemn it to a long war of attrition with Hamas.

The loss of any civilian lives is truly regrettable. Israel has cancelled many military operations because of its concern with civilian casualties. But should civilian losses occur despite the best efforts of Israel to avoid them, it is ultimately not Israel's responsibility. As political philosopher Michael Walzer noted in 2006: "When Palestinian militants launch rocket attacks from civilian areas, they are themselves responsible - and no one else is - for the civilian deaths caused by Israeli counterfire."15

International critics of Israel may be looking to craft balanced statements that spread the blame for the present conflict to both sides. But they would be better served if they did not engage in this artificial exercise, and clearly distinguish the side that is the aggressor in this conflict - Hamas - and the side that is trying to defeat the aggression - Israel.

1. For numbers of rockets, see Dore Gold, "Israel's War to Halt Palestinian Rocket Attacks," Jerusalem Issue Brief, Vol. 7, No. 34, March 3, 2008, Institute of Contemporary Affairs/Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

2. Robert Berger, "Israeli Official Warns of Growing Hamas Military Threat" Voice of America News, voa.com, May 17, 2008.

3. "News of Terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center (IICC), December 16-23, 2008.

4. "Intensive Rocket Fire Attacks Again Western Negev Population Center and the Ashqelon Region after Hamas Announces the End of the Lull Agreement," IICC, December 21, 2008.

5. "Secretary-General Urges Immediate Halt to Renewed Israeli-Palestinian Violence," UN News Service, December 27, 2008.

6. "World Reacts to Israel Strikes in Gaza," Deutsche Welle, dw-world.de, December 28, 2008.

7. "Brazil Criticizes Israeli Attack on Gaza: Special Report: Palestine-Israel Relations," China View, www.chinaview.cn, December 28, 2008.

8. R. Higgins, cited in "Responding to Hamas Attacks from Gaza - Issues of Proportionality Background Paper," Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, March 2008.

9. Abraham Bell, "International Law and Gaza: The Assault on Israel's Right to Self-Defense," Jerusalem Issue Brief, Vol. 7, No. 29, January 28, 2008, Institute for Contemporary Affairs/Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, .

10. Ibrahim Barzak and Amy Teibel, "Israeli Assault on Hamas Kills More than 200," Associated Press, December 28, 2008.

11. William Safire, "Proportionality," New York Times, August 13, 2006.

12. Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court, The Hague, February 9, 2008.

13. Alan Dershowitz, "The Hamas Government Has Declared War Against Israel: How Should Israel Respond?" Huffington Post, March 14, 2008, .

14. Richard Cohen, "No, It's Survival," Washington Post, July 25, 2006.

15. Michael Walzer, "How Aggressive Should Israel Be? War Fair," The New Republic Online, July 31, 2006.

STATEMENT BY AZM PRESIDENT WILLIAM D HESS ?ON SITUATION IN GAZA
(New York, NY, December 29, 2008) In the face of repeated warnings of the consequences of renewed rocket and mortar attacks against Israel, Hamas has chosen to launch attacks of increased severity and frequency against the Jewish State. Israel has long practiced restraint despite provocation, but with the growing barrage of missiles landing in southern Israel, the situation became intolerable. This past weekend, Israel's government made the decision to defend its citizens by stopping those who fire upon them.

We commend the successes of the Israel Air Force in destroying the supply tunnels, which enable the transfer of increasingly sophisticated weapons into Gaza. We are thankful for the support and understanding of the Bush administration and hope the world community will follow its lead. We know that no nation on earth would withstand such sustained assaults and threats against its civilian population, whether perpetrated by an elected government or an armed band, without such a response.

The cynicism of the Hamas leadership, demonstrated by the embedding of ordnance in Gaza's civilian populations, is as heinous as are the attacks launched against Sderot, Otef Aza, and Ashkelon in recent days and which threaten to reach even more deeply into Israel. We grieve for all the innocent lives lost and shattered in this conflict.

Today is the conclusion of the season of Chanuka, the festival of lights. It is a Zionist holiday celebrating Jewish sovereignty. Our Chanukiyot glow at their full brightness today. Let them light the road to understanding between Israel and the Palestinians and ultimately to a full and lasting peace for all in the region. May Gilad Shalit, who remains a hostage after more than 900 days in captivity, soon be safely returned home to his family and nation. Let nation not raise swords or rockets against nation, let peace shine on Jerusalem.
The American Zionist Movement, the American affiliate of the World Zionist Organization, is an umbrella organization of 35 adult, student and youth Zionist organizations, which spans the ideological spectrum from right to left and includes the Orthodox, Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements.

Dr. Dore Gold, Israel's ambassador to the UN in 1997-99, is President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and author of Hatred's Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism (Regnery, 2003) and The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City (Regnery, 2007).